The laggards had caught up, and at the edge of the arc of firelight a wide semicircle of insanely glaring eyeballs and gleaming fangs told where the wolf-pack waited. There was a terrifying sense of certainty in their method. They took no chance of open attack, wasted no breath in needless howling or snarling, but merely sat upon their haunches beyond the circle of the firelight--waiting. Again the man shuddered. Before him, he knew, lay at least fifteen miles of trail knee-deep with snow, and he had left but one small ration of unpalatable and unnutritious food. "I seem to be up against a tough proposition," he mused. "What was it Appleton said about battle, murder, and sudden death? It looks from here as if the old boy knew what he was talking about. But it is kind of rough on a man to roll them all up into one bundle and hand it to him right on the kick-off." He had heard of men who became lost in the woods and died horribly of cold and starvation, or went down to the rush of the wolf-pack. "As long as I stick to this road I won't get lost," he thought. "I may freeze to death, or starve, or furnish a cozy meal for the wolves yonder, but even at that I still have the edge on those others--I'm damned if I'm _lost_!" And, strange as it may seem, the thought gave him much comfort. He tossed more wood on the fire and watched the shower of sparks which shot high above the flames. "To-morrow will be my busy day," he remarked, addressing the wolves. "Good night, you hell-hounds! Just stick around and see that nothing sneaks up and bites me." He hurled a blazing firebrand among the foremost of the hungry hoard, but these did not retreat--merely leaped back, snarling, to lurk in the outer shadows. Bill's sleep was fitful. The snow ceased to fall during the early hours of the night, and the pair of blankets with which he had provided himself proved entirely inadequate protection against the steadily increasing cold. Time and again he awoke and replenished the fire, for, no matter in what position he lay, one side of his body seemed freezing, while the other toasted uncomfortably in the hot glare of the flames. And always--just at the rim of the fire-light--sat the wolves, waiting in their ominous circle of silence. But in the interims between these awakenings he slept profoundly, oblivious alike to discomfort and danger--as the dead sleep. At the first hint of dawn Bill hastily consumed the last of his unpalatable food and resumed his journey. Hour after hour he toiled through the snow, and always the wolf-pack followed, haunting his trail in the open roadway and flanking him in the deep shade of the evergreen forest, moving tirelessly through the loose snow in long, slow leaps.