He smiled at her. He began to mumble. Then words came, and finally simple, broken sentences expressing the sufferer’s wants. He was at this stage when the snow ceased falling. Two days of calm were followed by a bitter wind, which cut the snow from the hillsides and sent Charmian struggling to a lofty eminence from where she had a view of the distant ice-locked lake. She could see the snow clouds blowing over there, and her heart leaped with hope. Then the airplane came roaring over the valley, circled down into it, glided to one end of the lake, turned, and came on in a downward swoop with the stretch of ice before it. She saw it strike the ice and held her breath. Great clouds of snow-dust arose and hit it, and she screamed with dread. But next instant she saw it skimming over the ice at terrific speed, the snow clouds trailing behind it. Slower and slower became its rate of progress; and when it was still Charmian sank down in the snow, and for the first time since reading the doctor’s message she found relief in tears. She stood up after the storm of tears had passed and saw two tiny figures coming toward her over the snow. She watched them, fascinated, for over half an hour, insensible to the biting wind. Then when they drew nearer she noted that they were headed toward her smoke streams, and she jumped about and waved her arms to attract attention to herself. Presently she knew that they had seen her, for the foremost waved his hat and the two changed direction. The speed at which they travelled showed that they were on snowshoes. They come on rapidly straight toward her. Then when they were very near and she heard a faint shout and recognized the doctor’s voice, a sudden wild panic seized her. She had been alone so long in that wild, desolate snow land, with only a helpless, drivelling idiot for company, that a strange dread of meeting these men took hold on her. Again the doctor shouted to her. Hysteria overcame her. With a little moan she turned and started running like a wild thing toward her cave. Three times she stumbled over rocks hidden in the snow and pitched forward on her face. She had left the knoll and was on the level land. She glanced back over her shoulder as she ran. It seemed that no one was pursuing her. She slackened her pace, stopped, trembling and sobbing, and tried to fight off her terror. And then it was that a figure suddenly stood before her with two arms outstretched. She had not realized that they would not follow her over the knoll, but would keep to the level land and travel much faster than she had. They even had passed her, and had cut in ahead of her. She shrank back, biting her white lips. “There--there--there!” came in soothing tones. “It’s all right now--all right now, Charmian.” Next instant the long arms closed about her. Her tears burst forth again, but she lowered her head to Inman Shonto’s shoulder, and the panic passed.