over the endless wastes of snow, and upon their faces was beginning to
creep the look of that pain that strong men unbeaten feel who see a
beating in sight; but never for a moment did they slacken their swift,
mysterious glide.

An hour passed. Foam began to fleck the evilly up-lifted lips
glistening back to the glistening fangs of the wolverines, now miles
apart, but still heading in the same general line, and upon their faces
began to set a look of fiends under torture; but never for a moment did
they check their indescribable shuffling slouch.

After that all was a nightmare, blurred and horrible, in which endless
processions of trees passed dimly, interspersed with aching blanks of
dazzling white that blinded the starting eyes, and man and beast
stumbled more than once as they sobbed along, forcing each leg forward
by sheer will alone.

At last, on the summit of a hog-backed, bristling ridge, Gulo stopped
and looked back, scowling and peering under his low brows. Beneath
him, far away, the valley lay like a white tablecloth, all dotted with
green pawns, and the pawns were trees. But he was not looking for
them. His keen eyes were searching for movement, and he saw it after a
bit, a dot that crept, and crept, and crept, and--_stopped_!

Gulo sat up, shading his eyes against the watery sun with his forepaws,
watching as perhaps he had never watched in his life before.

For a long, long while, it seemed to him, that dot remained there
motionless, far, far away down in the valley, and then at length,
slowly, so slowly that at first the movement was not perceptible, it