The effort now on these
icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more.
With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a
great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night
though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man
called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the
sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the
craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the
old "waste town." Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as
he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate
in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that
the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.
But in the "waste town" itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open
spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins,
the deserted council-house, the vacant "beloved square." Somehow, turn
as he would, this dim scene in the midst of the dense darkness of the
stormy night was before his eyes. Again and again he plunged into the
woods seeking to follow the well-known trail of the trading-path to the
camp and rejoin his companions, but invariably he would emerge from the
wilderness after a toilsome tramp, entering the old "waste town" at a
different angle.
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