no sun.

This was the Universe, dead and cold and dark, and he its only
citizen. Weatherbee? At such moments Weatherbee did not count. He
was a Caliban, a monstrous phantom, fettered to him for untold
ages, the penalty of some forgotten crime.

He lived with Death among the dead, emasculated by the sense of
his own insignificance, crushed by the passive mastery of the
slumbering ages. The magnitude of all things appalled him.
Everything partook of the superlative save himself--the perfect
cessation of wind and motion, the immensity of the snow-covered
wildness, the height of the sky and the depth of the silence.
That wind-vane--if it would only move. If a thunderbolt would fall,
or the forest flare up in flame.

The rolling up of the heavens as a scroll, the crash of
Doom--anything, anything! But no, nothing moved; the Silence
crowded in, and the Fear of the North laid icy fingers on his
heart.

Once, like another Crusoe, by the edge of the river he came upon
a track--the faint tracery of a snowshoe rabbit on the delicate
snow-crust. It was a revelation.

There was life in the Northland. He would follow it, look upon
it, gloat over it.

He forgot his swollen muscles, plunging through the deep snow in
an ecstasy of anticipation. The forest swallowed him up, and the