She tossed the crusts of a frozen loaf to the dogs, made up her pack, bound on her webs, and set off on Jim's laborious trail. As she reached the edge of the barren she saw the first swoop of the wind lift and drive a great cloud of snow along the desolate expanse. She hesitated for a moment, then advanced from the shelter of the woods. The level rays of the sun flamed across the white waste and dazzled her eyes. The tears froze on her cheeks and lashes, and she wiped them away with the back of a red mitten. The dogs ran ahead in Jim's deep trail. The wind swooped again, nearer this time, spun gleaming clouds in the sunshine and enveloped the girl in an icy blast and veils of stinging snow. She bowed her head and closed her eyes until the suffocating drift had passed. The wind increased in violence. The sun continued to shine in a clear sky, but it and the landscape were frequently completely veiled from the girl by the flying drift. Sometimes the wind and the hunted snow swirled past her on the right or left, and sometimes it swirled over her, closing her eyes and snatching away her breath. She held bravely to her course. The dogs returned to her, leaping and yelping anxiously. Long mounds of white formed before her heavy snowshoes, puffed up and vanished and formed again. But she staggered ahead, stooped almost double. She wondered anxiously if Jim had reached shelter. Suddenly, after a deluge of wind and snow more violent and prolonged than usual, she saw that the deep tracks had vanished, wiped out in some places and completely filled in others. She halted unsteadily for a moment and selected landmarks to travel by before the drift sprang up again, then staggered forward. Consciousness soon returned to Jim Todhunter in the den in the heart of the thicket of spruces. He found that snow had sifted in upon him, through the tangled and overlapping boughs, to a depth of several inches. He stood up, taking all his weight on the uninjured leg, and shook the blankets. He felt much better--almost himself again. He looked abroad, over the edge of the pit and through the heavy screen of branches, and saw the drifting clouds lift and spin and fall. He thought, against his will, of Flora Ducat. He wondered if she had yet waked and discovered his absence. He hoped not. He hoped that no evil chance had aroused her in time for her to have left the shelter of the western forest before sunrise and the outbreak of wind. To change the trend of his thoughts, he untied and unwound the blanket from his left leg, examined the bandages, and found them all in order and free of blood, and replaced the blanket. He smoked a cigarette very comfortably, listening to the wind and driving drift go past and over and watching the sift of snow as fine as spray through the black brush above him.