His heart sank a little as he set out straight north, marking the
direction by the point of his compass. It was a gray and sunless
day. Beyond him for a distance the Barren was a white plain, and
this plain seemed always to be merging not very far ahead into the
purple haze of the sky. At the end of an hour he was in the center
of a vast amphitheater which was filled with the gloom and the
stillness of death. Behind him the thin fringe of the forest had
disappeared. The rim of the sky was like a leaden thing, widening
only as he advanced. Under that sky, and imprisoned within its
circular walls, he knew that men had gone mad; he felt already the
crushing oppression of an appalling loneliness, and for another
hour he fought an almost irresistible desire to turn back. Not a
rock or a shrub rose to break the monotony, and over his head--so
low that at times it seemed as though he might have flung a stone
up to them--dark clouds rolled sullenly from out of the north and
east.

Half a dozen times in those first two hours he looked at his
compass. Not once in that time did Bram diverge from his steady
course into the north. In the gray gloom, without a stone or a
tree to mark his way, his sense of orientation was directing him
as infallibly as the sensitive needle of the instrument which
Philip carried.

It was in the third hour, seven or eight miles from the scene of
slaughter, that Philip came upon the first stopping place of the
sledge. The wolves had not broken their traveling rank, and for
this reason he guessed that Bram had paused only long enough to
put on his snowshoes. After this Philip could measure quite