Jim back-tracked along Flora's trail as fast as he could without straining his dragging leg or overheating himself. In spite of his bitterness and indignation, he kept his mind cool and clear on the job in hand. He paused now and then to clear eyes and nose of snow. He lay too low, and was too warmly clad and busily engaged to feel the cold. He kept to the track without a fault. Once, before dawn, he rested for twenty minutes and smoked a couple of cigarettes. By sunrise he within fifty yards of the edge of the forest. He staggered upright on a straight leg and looked around him; and at the same moment he heard a gust of wind strike and moan among the black spires of the forest in front, felt its icy breath on his face and saw the dry snow around him rise and run in a blinding cloud. That puff of wind and blown snow passed and fell in a second, and he saw a clump of stunted spruces a few rods away on his right. Then a bright idea came to him and he sank to hands and knee again and crawled off on a new course. He was determined to regain the glen without any help from the girl who had believed him to be a coward and a liar; he knew that his only chance of accomplishing this lay in eluding pursuit, for she could travel three yards to his one, and in this sudden draught of wind from the rising sun--the promise of a windy day--he saw his way to tricking her. In the open, with a wind blowing, even his trench-like spoor would soon be drifted full and utterly obliterated, but not so in the shelter of the thick timber. So he crawled for the little clump of bushy spruces. He would let her go blindly by, and then follow and complete his journey in his own time. He would show her that, even when crippled, he needed no assistance from one who thought of him as she did. He crawled to the center of the stiff tangle and dug deep in the snow to the very roots of the spruces. Here was a snug retreat, a veritable den, walled with snow and brush and dead fern and roofed with several layers of wide boughs. He unrolled his blankets; and then a sudden dizziness assailed him. He fought against it for a few seconds, extended his wounded leg and drew the blankets about him, sagged lower, and lay still and unconscious. Flora Ducat awoke at dawn, built up the fire with dry twigs, greeted the bounding dogs and then discovered Jim's absence. Gone! Gone with rifle, blankets, and wounded leg! Her eyes tingled with tears, her heart faltered, and her cheeks went gray at the implication. He would risk bleeding to death, or freezing in the snow, rather than remain in her company or accept her assistance. As she stared at the deep trail he had made, the tears suddenly formed and dimmed her sight. "He has crawled off like a wounded animal," she whispered.