“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” Smoke chanted, as he gazed upon these dusts of snow wind-driven into sky-scarves of shimmering silken light.

And still he gazed, and still the bannered peaks did not vanish, and still he considered that he dreamed, until Labiskwee sat up among the furs.

“I dream, Labiskwee,” he said.  “Look.  Do you, too, dream within my dream?”

“It is no dream,” she replied.  “This have the old men told me.  And after this will blow the warm winds, and we shall live and win west.”

Smoke shot a snow-bird, and they divided it.  Once, in a valley where willows budded standing in the snow, he shot a snowshoe rabbit.  Another time he got a lean, white weasel.  This much of meat they encountered, and no more, though, once, half-mile high and veering toward the west and the Yukon, they saw a wild-duck wedge drive by.

“It is summer in the lower valleys,” said Labiskwee.  “Soon it will be summer here.”

Labiskwee’s face had grown thin, but the bright, large eyes were brighter and larger, and when she looked at him she was transfigured by a wild, unearthly beauty.

The days lengthened, and the snow began to sink.  Each day the crust thawed, each night it froze again; and they were afoot early and late, being compelled to camp and rest during the midday hours of thaw when the crust could not bear their weight.  When Smoke grew snow-blind, Labiskwee towed him on a thong tied to her waist.  And when she was so blinded, she towed behind a thong to his waist.  And starving, in a deeper dream, they struggled on through an awakening land bare of any life save their own.

Exhausted as he was, Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land.  Always were they of food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the malign deviser of dreams.  He gave dinners to his comrades of the old San Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye, directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed runners of the autumn grape.  The guests were dilatory, and while he greeted them and all sparkled with their latest cleverness, he was frantic with desire for the table.  He stole to it, unobserved, and clutched a handful of black ripe olives, and turned to meet still another guest.  And others surrounded him, and the laugh and play of wit went on, while all the time, hidden in his closed hand, was this madness of ripe olives.

He gave many such dinners, all with the same empty ending.  He attended Gargantuan feasts, where multitudes fed on innumerable bullocks roasted whole, prying them out of smoldering pits and with sharp knives slicing great strips of meat from the steaming carcasses.  He stood, with mouth agape, beneath long rows of turkeys which white-aproned shopmen sold.  And everybody bought save Smoke, mouth still agape,