The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then
each time fell the mirthless silence of the storm.
Day came, only a little lighter than the night. He crossed the lake,
his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half-
hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the
south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more
faintly than the last, until they had died away entirely.
Across the lake he struck the forest again, and his shouts echoed in
futile inquiry in its weird depths. About him there was no sign of
life, no sound except the faint fluttering of falling snow. Under five
feet of this snow the four-footed creatures of the wilderness were
snugly buried; close against the trunks of the spruces, sheltered
within their tent-like coverings, the birds waited like lifeless
things for the breaking of the storm.
At noon Jan stopped and ate his lunch. Then he went on, carrying his
rifle always upon his right shoulder, so that the steps of his right
leg would be shortened, and he would travel in a circle, as he
believed Dixon had done.
The storm thickened with the falling of night, and he burrowed himself
a great hole in the soft snow and filled it with balsam boughs for a
bed. When he awakened, hours later, he stood up, and thrust out his
head, and found himself buried to the arm-pits.
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