Part 7 (1/2)
The afflicted ht well have failed, had he known all the ghastly truth as to how sorely he was beset Had sight been granted to hiht have turned readily to the expedient suggested by the half-breed, which he had rejected so firht have drawn the keen blade of the knife across his own throat
For, stealthily picking their way along the back trail toward Lake Sturgeon, two Indians went swiftly, and they bore with them, divided equally between them, the contents of the lostforth, these two had followed hiht, they had ventured to camp close to him, since to their eyes of experience it was , when he lost his way, they had stolen his belongings, thereby to insure the end Then, wearied of their long vigil, they took the holad hearts They knew beyond any shadow of questioning that death to the wanderer could be only a matter of a few hours now They could safely report to the council of the brotherhood that the condemned had followed Death Trail to its end
Mercifully, Donald guessed nothing of all this So, he held to his slow course eastith a stolidly patient courage against every obstacle Very often, he verified his direction by feeling the shoots of the shrubbery, or by the rew at the foot of the tree-trunks Always, the cold assaulted hier waxed, its attacks were ies left hi chill of the air Frequently, he was forced to halt, in order that heover the blaze for a tiht dren on him, he felt himself so enfeebled, so sensitive to the icy wind, that he feared to sleep, lest he , now by sheer stress of will-power lashi+ng the spentintervals, he stopped to make a little fire, over which he huddled drowsily, but with his will set fir for a sleep which, of necessity,In suchhours
When he felt the co, the follower of the Death Trail wasstore of matches
There were just a score of them It seemed, then, that, after all, the end would coainst the deadly cold he could summon his ally of fire only twenty times, and without that ally his surrender must be swift Therefore, as he went forward now, he endured the sufferings inflicted by the icy blasts to new lier supply of matches--which had come to, be his ave over the reckoning of tiht of day or of night
Subconsciously, he still paused often to ht before him; but the activities of hisof the matches that measured his span of life And, as one after another served his need of ware dwindled steadily, until, when but a single splinter of the precious as left hiave over the last pretense of bravery, and shook cowardly in the clutch of fear He continued a staggering advance for a long time, but hope was fled The desire for food was not so ue and throat He resisted a frantic craving to devour the snow, since he kneell that this would but ue and thirst and even the stabbing cold, which would at last be his executioner, were not the things that swayed his ees of the Death Trail Somehow, the ony was felt through a blessedcuriously remote, almost impersonal Always, his consciousness was filled with aof the matches, the measure of his life So, when there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, coht was shrunken to a puny shaled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the progress of a snail Then, suddenly, another step beca of which he could not even think He lurched forward, and fell against a tree-trunk The concussion aroused hi Very sloith a dreadful cluments of the bark within his reach, piled them in readiness, struck the match, and set it to the loose fibers It never occurred to hiht fail
And it did not Its tiny fla blaze Donald, on his knees, with hands outspread like a worshi+per in adoration before his God--as In truth he was!--felt the penetrant vibrations of the fire with an inexpressible languor of bliss
This was the last y of utter exhaustion dulled fa The obsession of the match still held its mastery, and its expression was the hot flaht of death now, though vaguely he knew that he was prone at the feet of death Itsave this luxury of warmth that was shed upon him from the last match; this luxury of warmth, and that other luxury of sleep, which stole upon hily
CHAPTER VII
JEAN PUTS IT UP TO HER FATHER
Jean Fitzpatrick rose from the breakfast-table at Fort Severn, and asked for the Winnipeg papers Three days before, the allop, and ever since the white folk at the fort had been having a riot of joy Months-old letters frootten friends, and papers many weeks behind their dates had been perused over and over again, until they could alossip over personages perhaps dead by this ti since passed frolamourous cities of far-off civilization
Jean passed fro-room, where many days before she had sent Donald McTavish from her presence Her father, who, had eaten earlier, had retired into his private study, pleading business irl settled herself luxuriously near a square, snow-edged ith a pile of newspapers beside her easy chair
She had not been reading long when voices raised in argument at the front door distracted her attention
”No,” the servant of the house was saying, ”you can't see the factor He has given orders that he cannot be disturbed”
”But Ithe Ojibway dialect ”I have coo away to-day”
”Who are you?” asked butts, the British butler, who served the factor's table with all the cerelish manor
”Maria”
”Maria who?
”Just Maria I don't need any other naive it to him Then, you can come around later in the day for your answer”
”No, I can't do that This is so I must say to him myself, and in private,” croaked the voice
”Well, you can't see him, and that's all there is about it,” snapped butts with finality, and he slammed the door full in the old Indian wo up and hurried fro with resentment
”Here, butts,” she said sharply, ”call that wo-room I will hear what she has to say, if she will tellvast disapproval in his tone, opened the door