Thus they lived through the last days of October into November.  And now the snow and the cold winds and the fierce blizzards from the north came in earnest, and the ponds and lakes began to freeze over.  Still Thor hung to the slopes, and Muskwa shivered with the cold at night and wondered if the sun was never going to shine again.

One day about the middle of November Thor stopped in the very act of digging out a family of whistlers, went straight down into the valley, and struck southward in a most businesslike way.  They were ten miles from the clay-wallow canyon when they started, but so lively was the pace set by the big grizzly that they reached it before dark that same afternoon.

For two days after this Thor seemed to have no object in life at all.  There was nothing in the canyon to eat, and he wandered about among the rocks, smelling and listening and deporting himself generally in a fashion that was altogether mystifying to Muskwa.  In the afternoon of the second day Thor stopped in a dump of jackpines under which the ground was strewn with fallen needles.  He began to eat these needles.  They did not look good to Muskwa, but something told the cub that he should do as Thor was doing; so he licked them up and swallowed them, not knowing that it was nature’s last preparation for his long sleep.

It was four o’clock when they came to the mouth of the deep cavern in which Thor was born, and here again Thor paused, sniffing up and down the wind, and waiting for nothing in particular.

It was growing dark.  A wailing storm hung over the canyon.  Biting winds swept down from the peaks, and the sky was black and full of snow.

For a minute the grizzly stood with his head and shoulders in the cavern door.  Then he entered.  Muskwa followed.  Deep back they went through a pitch-black gloom, and it grew warmer and warmer, and the wailing of the wind died away until it was only a murmur.

It took Thor at least half an hour to arrange himself just as he wanted to sleep.  Then Muskwa curled up beside him.  The cub was very warm and very comfortable.

That night the storm raged, and the snow fell deep.  It came up the canyon in clouds, and it drifted down through the canyon roof in still thicker clouds, and all the world was buried deep.  When morning came there was no cavern door, there were no rocks, and no black and purple of tree and shrub.  All was white and still, and there was no longer the droning music in the valley.

Deep back in the cavern Muskwa moved restlessly.  Thor heaved a deep sigh.  After that long and soundly they slept.  And it may be that they dreamed.

THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN

“You are going up from among a people who have many gods to a people who have but one,” said Ransom quietly, looking across at the other.  “It would be better for you if you turned back.  I’ve spent four years in the Government service, mostly north of Fifty-three, and I know what I’m talking about.  I’ve read all of your books carefully, and I tell you now—­go back.  If you strike up into the Bay country, as you say you’re going to, every dream of socialism you ever had will be shattered, and you will laugh at your own books.  Go back!”