Lying in his bunk against the wall, the packer watched this sentinel snowdrift grow and become human and bold and familiar. His deep-lined visage was reduced to its bony structure. The hand was a claw with which he plucked at the ancient fever-crust shredding from his lips: an occupation at once so absorbing and so exhausting that often the hand would drop and the blankets rise upon the arch of the chest in a sigh of retarded respiration. The sigh would be followed by a cough, controlled, as in dread of the shock to a sore and shattered frame. The snow came faster and faster until the dim, wintry pane was a blur. Millions of atoms crossed the watcher's weary vision, whirling, wavering, driven with an aimless persistence, unable to pause or to stop. And the blind white snowdrift climbed, fed, like human circumstance, from disconnected atoms impelled by a common law. There were sounds in the cabin: wet wood sweating on hot coals; a step that went to and fro. Outside, a snow-weighted bough let go its load and sprang up, scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off the roof and dropped with a _chug_. Then the door, that hung awry like a drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as a sower scatters grain,--snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or melted into a crawling pool--red in the firelight, red as blood! These and other phantasms had now for an unmeasured time been tenants of the packer's brain, sharing and often overpowering the reality of the human step that went to and fro. To-day the shapes and relations of things were more natural, and the step aroused a querulous curiosity. “Who's there?” the sick man imagined himself to have said. A croaking sound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, brought the step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almost as his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand with womanish nails placed its fingers on his wrist. “You are better to-day. Your pulse is down. I wouldn't try to talk.” “Who's that--outside?” “There is no one outside,” Paul answered, following the direction of his patient's eyes. “That? That is only a snowdrift. It grows faster than I can shovel it away.” The packer had forgotten his own question. He dozed off, and presently roused again as suddenly as he had slept. His utterance was clearer, but not his meaning. “What--you want to fetch me back for?” “Back?” Paul repeated. “I was most gone, wa'n't I?” “Back to life, you mean? You came back of yourself. I hadn't much to do with it.” “What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?” “You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in. The altitude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call.” “Been here all the time?” “Have I been here?--yes.” “'Lone?”