closely. How far had they come, he wondered? It must have been from
the other side of the Barren, for Deane had built the box to protect
Isobel from the fierce winds of the open. It was built of light, dry
wood, hewn with a belt ax, and the corners were fastened with babiche
cord made of caribou skin in place of nails. The balsam that had been
placed in it for Isobel was still in the box, and Billy's heart beat a
little more quickly as he drew it out. It had been Isobel's bed. He
could see where the balsam was thicker, where her head had rested.
With a sudden breathless cry he thrust the box on the fire.

He was not hungry, but he made himself a pot of coffee and drank it.
Until now he had not observed that the storm was growing steadily
worse. The thick, low-hanging spruce broke the force of it. Beyond the
shelter of the forest he could hear the roar of it as it swept through
the thin scrub and open spaces of the edge of the Barren. It recalled
him once more to Pelliter. In the excitement of Isobel's presence and
the shock and despair that had followed her flight he had been guilty
of partly forgetting Pelliter. By the time he reached the Eskimo
igloos there would be two days lost. Those two days might mean
everything to his sick comrade. He jumped to his feet, felt in his
pocket to see that the letters were safe, and began to arrange his
pack. Through the trees there came now fine white volleys of
blistering snow. It was like the hardest granulated sugar. A sudden
blast of it stung his eyes; and, leaving his pack and tent, he made
his way anxiously toward the more open timber and scrub. A few hundred
yards from the camp he was forced to bow his head against the snow
volleys and pull the broad flaps of his cap down over his cheeks and
ears. A hundred yards more and he stopped, sheltering himself behind a
gnarled and stunted banskian. He looked out into the beginning of the
open. It was a white and seething chaos into which he could not see