He rose to his feet and looked about him. He started, shivered a little, and drawing his hand across his eyes, fixed them on the feeding horse. But it was the narrowed, strained effort of a dulled vision. Sir Donald seemed a long distance off; or was it later than he thought? He looked at his watch, and finding a match, held the flame close to the face. "It is nothing," he muttered, and dropping the match, put the watch back into his pocket. "It is nothing—it has happened before. I have been staring too long at the glare of the sun on those yellow plains. It will pass. In a moment or two—it will pass." He began to walk slowly, unsteadily towards the horse. He put out his hand like one who feels his way in the night. "Donald, old fellow," he said. "Donald, we are getting to the end of the—rope." Then he touched the chestnut’s mane, and, at the contact, his iron nerve gave completely away. His whole frame trembled. His arm sank over the arching neck. He dropped his face on it, sobbing, not as he had when he was a child, but as such a man, not all men, can sob—just once in a lifetime. *CHAPTER XXIX* *THE CRACK OF DOOM* Once more, up in the Pass, the glare of the sun on the fresh snow brought on that dullness of vision, and Stratton was forced to halt, creeping, groping out of the bitter wind to the shelter of a crag, where he spent the night, miserably. It was after that, though his sight returned, he discovered it had lost accuracy. Twice, when the prize seemed sure, he missed his aim. The first time it was a young elk, lagging behind the herd in a green pocket of a gorge; and again it was a stag that crossed the trail in front of him. Later, in making the dangerously high water at Nisqually ford, his ammunition became wet and useless. But on the final morning, at his old way camp hidden among some alders near the river, he succeeded in snaring a squirrel. This, with some late blueberries, which he had gathered on a higher slope the previous day, served to temper the keen edge of his hunger.