Standing motionless in the dreadful gloom of blindness, insensible to the growing cold, Bill made himself look his situation in the face. His mind was no longer blunt and dull. It was cool, analytic; he balanced one thing against another; he judged the per cent. of his chance. At present it did not occur to him to give up. It is never the way of the sons of the wilderness to yield without a fight. They know life in all its travail and pain, but also they know the Cold and Darkness and Fear that is death. No matter how long the odds are, the wilderness creature fights to his last breath. Bill had always fought; his life had been a great war of which birth was the reveille and death would be retreat. He was wholly self-contained, his mind under perfect discipline. He would figure it all out and seek the best way through. Long, weary miles of trackless forest stretched between him and safety. There was no food in this cabin, no blankets; and the fire was out. His Twenty-three Mile cabin was only slightly less distant than the one he had left. And through those endless drifts and interminable forests the blind, unaided, could not find their way. He could conceive of no circumstances whereby Virginia and Harold would come to look for him short of another day and night. They did not expect him back until the end of the present day; they could not possible start forth to seek him until another daylight. And this man knew what the forest and the cold would do to him in twenty-four hours. Already the cold was getting to him. For all that he had no food, he knew that if he could keep warm he could survive until help came. Yet men cannot fast in these winter woods as they can in the South. The simple matter of inner fuel is a desperate and an essential thing. But he had no blankets, and without a fire he would die, speedily and surely. He didn't deceive himself on this point. He knew the northern winter only too well. A few hours of suffering, then a slow warmth that stole through the veins and was the herald of departure. He had been warmed through in the cabin, but that warmth would soon pass away. He wondered if he could rebuild the fire. He was suddenly shaken with terror at the thought that already he did not know in what direction the fire and the cabin lay. He had become turned around when he strode out to light the match. Instantly he began to search for the cabin door. He went down on his hands in the snow, groping, then moved in a slow, careful circle. Just one little second's bewilderment, one variation from the circle, and he might lose the cabin altogether. That meant _death!_ It could mean no other thing. But in a moment the smoke blew into his face, and he advanced into the ashes. The next moment, by circling again, he found the cabin door. He leaned against it, breathing hard. "It won't do, Bill," he told himself. "Hold steady--for one minute more."