The red glow of the sun was rising above the forest and Rod could now
see far about him. He had come out from the cedars, like this, on the
afternoon that he had gone to hunt and had found Minnetaki's trail. A
mile away he saw the snow-covered ridge where he had hunted for moose.
That ridge was his first guide, and he hurried toward it while Mukoki
and Wabigoon followed far behind him with the dogs and the sledge.
He was breathless when he reached the top. Eagerly he gazed into the
North. It was in that direction he had gone on the afternoon of his
discovery of the strange trail. But nothing that he recognized met his
eyes now, no familiar landmark or tree to guide him again over his
wandering footsteps of that day. Vainly he sought along the ridge for
some slight sign of his former presence there. But everything was
gone. The sun had destroyed his last hope.

He was glad that Mukoki and Wabigoon were at the foot of the ridge,
for he knew that his despair almost brought tears to his eyes,
Minnetaki's fate was in his hands--and he had failed. He dreaded to
tell his companions, to let them see his face. For once in his life,
though he was as courageous a youth as ever lived, Roderick Drew
almost wished that he was dead.

Suddenly, as in their hopeless search for some familiar object Rod's
eyes traveled again over the endless waste of snow, he saw, far away,
something that glittered in the morning sun like a pane of glass, and
from his lips there fell a low exultant cry. He remembered now that he
had seen that strange gleam before, that he had gone straight to it
from the ridge and had found it to be a sheet of crystal ice frozen
to the side of a rock from above which the water of a spring gushed
forth. Without waiting for his companions he hurried down the
ridge and sped like a deer across the narrow plain at its foot. A