Labiskwee lay in a stupor, her breathing so imperceptible that often Smoke thought her dead.  In the afternoon the chattering of a squirrel aroused him.  Dragging the heavy rifle, he wallowed through the crust that had become slush.  He crept on hands and knees, or stood upright and fell forward in the direction of the squirrel that chattered its wrath and fled slowly and tantalizingly before him.  He had not the strength for a quick shot, and the squirrel was never still.  At times Smoke sprawled in the wet snow-melt and cried out of weakness.  Other times the flame of his life flickered, and blackness smote him.  How long he lay in the last faint he did not know, but he came to, shivering in the chill of evening, his wet clothing frozen to the re-forming crust.  The squirrel was gone, and after a weary struggle he won back to the side of Labiskwee.  So profound was his weakness that he lay like a dead man through the night, nor did dreams disturb him.

The sun was in the sky, the same squirrel chattering through the trees, when Labiskwee’s hand on Smoke’s cheek awakened him.

“Put your hand on my heart, lover,” she said, her voice clear but faint and very far away.  “My heart is my love, and you hold it in your hand.”

A long time seemed to go by, ere she spoke again.

“Remember always, there is no way south.  That is well known to the Caribou People.  West—­that is the way—­and you are almost there—­and you will make it.”

And Smoke drowsed in the numbness that is near to death, until once more she aroused him.

“Put your lips on mine,” she said.  “I will die so.”

“We will die together, sweetheart,” was his answer.

“No.”  A feeble flutter of her hand checked him, and so thin was her voice that scarcely did he hear it, yet did he hear all of it.  Her hand fumbled and groped in the hood of her parka, and she drew forth a pouch that she placed in his hand.  “And now your lips, my lover.  Your lips on my lips, and your hand on my heart.”

And in that long kiss darkness came upon him again, and when again he was conscious he knew that he was alone and he knew that he was to die.  He was wearily glad that he was to die.

He found his hand resting on the pouch.  With an inward smile at the curiosity that made him pull the draw-string, he opened it.  Out poured a tiny flood of food.  There was no particle of it that he did not recognize, all stolen by Labiskwee from Labiskwee—­bread-fragments saved far back in the days ere McCan lost the flour; strips and strings of caribou-meat, partly gnawed; crumbles of suet; the hind-leg of the snowshoe rabbit, untouched; the hind-leg and part of the fore-leg of the white weasel; the wing dented still by her reluctant teeth, and the leg of the snow-bird—­pitiful remnants, tragic renunciations, crucifixions of life, morsels stolen from her terrible hunger by her incredible love.