chained by a leadenness of movement to the pavement.  A boy again, he sat with spoon poised high above great bowls of bread and milk.  He pursued shy heifers through upland pastures and centuries of torment in vain effort to steal from them their milk, and in noisome dungeons he fought with rats for scraps and refuse.  There was no food that was not a madness to him, and he wandered through vast stables, where fat horses stood in mile-long rows of stalls, and sought but never found the bran-bins from which they fed.

Once, only, he dreamed to advantage.  Famishing, shipwrecked or marooned, he fought with the big Pacific surf for rock-clinging mussels, and carried them up the sands to the dry flotsam of the spring tides.  Of this he built a fire, and among the coals he laid his precious trove.  He watched the steam jet forth and the locked shells pop apart, exposing the salmon-colored meat.  Cooked to a turn—­he knew it; and this time there was no intruding presence to whisk the meal away.  At last—­so he dreamed within the dream—­the dream would come true.  This time he would eat.  Yet in his certitude he doubted, and he was steeled for the inevitable shift of vision until the salmon-colored meat, hot and savory, was in his mouth.  His teeth closed upon it.  He ate!  The miracle had happened!  The shock aroused him.  He awoke in the dark, lying on his back, and heard himself mumbling little piggish squeals and grunts of joy.  His jaws were moving, and between his teeth meat was crunching.  He did not move, and soon small fingers felt about his lips, and between them was inserted a tiny sliver of meat.  And in that he would eat no more, rather than that he was angry, Labiskwee cried and in his arms sobbed herself to sleep.  But he lay on awake, marveling at the love and the wonder of woman.

The time came when the last food was gone.  The high peaks receded, the divides became lower, and the way opened promisingly to the west.  But their reserves of strength were gone, and, without food, the time quickly followed when they lay down at night and in the morning did not arise.  Smoke weakly gained his feet, collapsed, and on hands and knees crawled about the building of a fire.  But try as she would Labiskwee sank back each time in an extremity of weakness.  And Smoke sank down beside her, a wan sneer on his face for the automatism that had made him struggle for an unneeded fire.  There was nothing to cook, and the day was warm.  A gentle breeze sighed in the spruce-trees, and from everywhere, under the disappearing snow, came the trickling music of unseen streamlets.