"We must make it to-morrow or go hungry, eh? Well this isn't the first dog fish I ever ate." Both men gnawed a mouldy dried salmon from their precious store. As Willard removed his footgear he groaned. "Wat's the mattaire?" "I froze my foot two days ago--snow-shoe strap too tight." He exhibited a heel, from which, in removing his inner sock, the flesh and skin had come away. "That's all right," grinned Pierre. "You got the beeg will lef' yet. It take the heducate man for stan' the col', you know." Willard gritted his teeth. They awoke to the whine of a grey windstorm that swept the cutting snow in swirling clouds and made travel a madness. The next day was worse. Two days of hunger weigh heavy when the cold weakens, and they grew gaunt and fell away in their features. "I'm glad we've got another feed for the dogs," remarked Willard. "We can't let them run hungry, even if we do." "I t'ink she's be hall right to-mor'," ventured Pierre. "Thees ain't snow--jus' win'; bimeby all blow hout. Sacre! I'll can eat 'nuff for 'ole harmy." For days both men had been cold, and the sensation of complete warmth had come to seem strange and unreal, while their faces cracked where the spots had been. Willard felt himself on the verge of collapse. He recalled his words about strong men, gazing the while at Pierre. The Canadian evinced suffering only in the haggard droop of eye and mouth; otherwise he looked strong and dogged. Willard felt his own features had shrunk to a mask of loose-jawed suffering, and he set his mental sinews, muttering to himself. He was dizzy and faint as he stretched himself in the still morning air upon waking, and hobbled painfully, but as his companion emerged from the darkened shelter into the crystalline brightness he forgot his own misery at sight of him. The big man reeled as though struck when the dazzle from the hills reached him, and he moaned, shielding his sight. Snow-blindness had found him in a night. Slowly they plodded out of the valley, for hunger gnawed acutely, and they left a trail of blood tracks from the dogs. It took the combined efforts of both men to lash them to foot after each pause. Thus progress was slow and fraught with agony. As they rose near the pass, miles of Arctic wastes bared themselves. All about towered bald domes, while everywhere stretched the monotonous white, the endless snow unbroken by tree or shrub, pallid and menacing, maddening to the eye. "Thank God, the worst's over," sighed Willard, flinging himself onto the sled. "We'll make it to the summit next time; then she's down hill all the way to the road house." Pierre said nothing.