Occasionally they lapsed normal, and during one of these sane intervals, the chief bone of contention, the sugar, had been divided equally between them.  They guarded their separate sacks, stored up in the cache, with jealous eyes; for there were but a few cupfuls left, and they were totally devoid of faith in each other.

But one day Cuthfert made a mistake.  Hardly able to move, sick with pain, with his head swimming and eyes blinded, he crept into the cache, sugar canister in hand, and mistook Weatherbee’s sack for his own.

January had been born but a few days when this occurred.  The sun had some time since passed its lowest southern declination, and at meridian now threw flaunting streaks of yellow light upon the northern sky.  On the day following his mistake with the sugar-bag, Cuthfert found himself feeling better, both in body and in spirit.  As noontime drew near and the day brightened, he dragged himself outside to feast on the evanescent glow, which was to him an earnest of the sun’s future intentions.  Weatherbee was also feeling somewhat better, and crawled out beside him.  They propped themselves in the snow beneath the moveless wind-vane, and waited.

The stillness of death was about them.  In other climes, when nature falls into such moods, there is a subdued air of expectancy, a waiting for some small voice to take up the broken strain.  Not so in the North.  The two men had lived seeming eons in this ghostly peace.

They could remember no song of the past; they could conjure no song of the future.  This unearthly calm had always been—­the tranquil silence of eternity.

Their eyes were fixed upon the north.  Unseen, behind their backs, behind the towering mountains to the south, the sun swept toward the zenith of another sky than theirs.  Sole spectators of the mighty canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow.  A faint flame began to glow and smoulder.  It deepened in intensity, ringing the changes of reddish-yellow, purple, and saffron.  So bright did it become that Cuthfert thought the sun must surely be behind it—­a miracle, the sun rising in the north!  Suddenly, without warning and without fading, the canvas was swept clean.  There was no color in the sky.  The light had gone out of the day.

They caught their breaths in half-sobs.  But lo! the air was aglint with particles of scintillating frost, and there, to the north, the wind-vane lay in vague outline of the snow.

A shadow!  A shadow!  It was exactly midday.  They jerked their heads hurriedly to the south.  A golden rim peeped over the mountain’s snowy shoulder, smiled upon them an instant, then dipped from sight again.

There were tears in their eyes as they sought each other.  A strange softening came over them.  They felt irresistibly drawn toward each other.  The sun was coming back again.  It would be with them tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

And it would stay longer every visit, and a time would come when it would ride their heaven day and night, never once dropping below the skyline.  There would be no night.