He forgot his swollen muscles, plunging through the deep snow in an ecstasy of anticipation.  The forest swallowed him up, and the brief midday twilight vanished; but he pursued his quest till exhausted nature asserted itself and laid him helpless in the snow.

There he groaned and cursed his folly, and knew the track to be the fancy of his brain; and late that night he dragged himself into the cabin on hands and knees, his cheeks frozen and a strange numbness about his feet.  Weatherbee grinned malevolently, but made no offer to help him.  He thrust needles into his toes and thawed them out by the stove.  A week later mortification set in.

But the clerk had his own troubles.  The dead men came out of their graves more frequently now, and rarely left him, waking or sleeping.  He grew to wait and dread their coming, never passing the twin cairns without a shudder.  One night they came to him in his sleep and led him forth to an appointed task.  Frightened into inarticulate horror, he awoke between the heaps of stones and fled wildly to the cabin.  But he had lain there for some time, for his feet and cheeks were also frozen.

Sometimes he became frantic at their insistent presence, and danced about the cabin, cutting the empty air with an axe, and smashing everything within reach.

During these ghostly encounters, Cuthfert huddled into his blankets and followed the madman about with a cocked revolver, ready to shoot him if he came too near.

But, recovering from one of these spells, the clerk noticed the weapon trained upon him.

His suspicions were aroused, and thenceforth he, too, lived in fear of his life.  They watched each other closely after that, and faced about in startled fright whenever either passed behind the other’s back.  The apprehensiveness became a mania which controlled them even in their sleep.  Through mutual fear they tacitly let the slush-lamp burn all night, and saw to a plentiful supply of bacon-grease before retiring.  The slightest movement on the part of one was sufficient to arouse the other, and many a still watch their gazes countered as they shook beneath their blankets with fingers on the trigger-guards.

What with the Fear of the North, the mental strain, and the ravages of the disease, they lost all semblance of humanity, taking on the appearance of wild beasts, hunted and desperate.  Their cheeks and noses, as an aftermath of the freezing, had turned black.

Their frozen toes had begun to drop away at the first and second joints.  Every movement brought pain, but the fire box was insatiable, wringing a ransom of torture from their miserable bodies.  Day in, day out, it demanded its food—­a veritable pound of flesh—­and they dragged themselves into the forest to chop wood on their knees.  Once, crawling thus in search of dry sticks, unknown to each other they entered a thicket from opposite sides.

Suddenly, without warning, two peering death’s-heads confronted each other.  Suffering had so transformed them that recognition was impossible.  They sprang to their feet, shrieking with terror, and dashed away on their mangled stumps; and falling at the cabin’s door, they clawed and scratched like demons till they discovered their mistake.