They were strange figures in the snow flurries as they went to work to roll the blankets into a compact bundle. The food she had taken from their stores for breakfast he thrust into the pocket of his coat; the rest, with the blankets, she tied swiftly on the horse. They unfastened the animal and for a moment she stood holding the reins while Bruce crept back on the hillside to look for the trail. The snow swept round them, and they felt the lowering menace of the cold. And at that instant those dread spirits that rule the wilderness, jealous then and jealous still of the intrusion of man, dealt them a final, deadly blow. Its weapon was just a sound--a loud crash in a distant thicket--and a pungent message on the wind that their human senses were too blunt to receive. Bruce saw the full dreadfulness of the blow and was powerless to save. The horse suddenly snorted loudly, then reared up. He saw as in a tragic, dream the girl struggle to hold him; he saw her pulled down into the snow and the rein jerked from her hand. Then the animal plunged, wheeled, and raced at top speed away into the snow flurries. Some Terror that as yet they could not name had broken their control of him and in an instant taken from them this one last hope of safety. XXXII Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse, and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an attitude of prayer. He came rather slowly, and he even smiled a little. And she gave him a wan, strange, little smile in return. "We're down to cases at last," he said, with a rather startling quietness of tone. "You see what it means?" She nodded, then got to her feet. "We can walk out, if we are let alone and given time; it isn't that we are obliged to have the horse. But our blankets are on its back, and this storm is steadily becoming a blizzard. And you see--_time_ is one thing that we don't have. No human being can stand this cold for long unprotected." "And we can't keep going--keep warm by walking?" His answer was to take out his knife and put the point of the steel to his thumb nail. His eyes strained, then looked up. "A little way," he answered, "but we can't keep our main directions. The sun doesn't even cast a shadow on my nail to show us which is west. We could keep up a while, perhaps, but there is no end to this wilderness and at noon or to-night--the result would be the same." "And it means--the end?"