“Guess I need a big sleep,” he said.  “I’ve got to pull out with daylight.  Anything you want besides that written report passed on down?”

Peter shook his head and sat on awhile blinking silently at the firelight.  Then the dark man scrambled to his feet.  He stood for a moment, very tall, very bulky in his fur clothing, and nodded down at the others.

“So long,” he said.  And he moved off to his sleeping bag which was laid out to receive his tired body.

* * * * *

The man stood just within the shelter of the twilit forests.  He was a powerful creature of sturdy build, hall-marked with the forest craft which was his life.  He was clad in tough buckskin from head to foot.  Even his hands, which he frequently beat in a desire for warmth, were similarly clad.  His weatherbeaten face was hard set, and his eyes were narrowed to confront the merciless snow fog which the rage of the blizzard outside hurled at him.

The cold was almost unendurable even here in the wooded shelter.  Outside, where the storm raged unrestrainedly over its fierce playground, only blind hopelessness prevailed.

There was nothing to be done.  He could only wait.

He could only wait, and hope, or abandon his vigil, and return to his camp which was far back in the heart of the forests.  Away out there, somewhere lost in the blinding fog of the blizzard, which had only sprung up within the last hour, a lonely fellow creature was making for the shelter in which he stood.  He was driving headlong towards him.  Oh, yes.  He knew that.  He had seen the moving outfit far off, several miles away, over the snowy plains, before the storm had arisen.  Now—­where was he?  He could not tell.  He could not even guess at what might have happened.  Blinded, freezing, weary, how long could the lonely traveller endure and retain any sense of direction?

To the forest man the position was well-nigh tragic.  Had he not experience of the terror of a northern blizzard?  Had he not many a time had to grope his way along a life-line lest the slightest deviation in direction should carry him out into the storm to perish of cold, blinded and lost?  Oh, yes.  This understanding was the alphabet of his life.

As he stood there watching and wiping the snow from his eyes, he reminded himself not only of his own experience but of every story of disaster in a blizzard he had ever listened to.  And so he saw no hope for the poor wretch he had seen struggling to make the shelter.

But he could not bring himself to abandon his post.  How could he with a fellow creature out there in peril?  Besides, there was other reason, although it needed none.  He had urgent news for this man, news which must be imparted without delay, news which his employers must hear at the earliest possible moment.