Finally he awoke to find that the wind had lost much of its force, and looking upward through the treetops he saw the glimmer of a star. The cold had grown more intense. His feet and hands were numb. He piled some of the small branch wood upon the coals and as it burst into flame added some of the larger sticks.
“It must be comin’ mornin’, and th’ storm’s about blown over,” he said thankfully, listening for the wind, when he sat down again. “I’m thinkin’, now, ’twill soon be clear of shiftin’ snow on th’ mesh, and soon as I’m warmed I’ll see how ’tis, _what_ever.”
Despite his resolution not to worry, Andy was far from satisfied of David’s safety. Now as he sat by the fire he began again to picture David lying out on the marsh somewhere, stark and dead. The longer Andy permitted his mind to dwell upon the possibility of such a tragedy having taken place, the more probable it seemed. The snow-clad forest had never been so grim and silent. A foreboding of some horrible tragedy was in his heart. He could restrain himself no longer.
The numbness was hardly yet out of his hands and feet when he hurriedly arose, put on his snowshoes, shouldered his rifle, and picking up his ax, rushed out into the dim-lit forest to grope his way through trees to the marsh.
Fitful gusts of wind were still blowing over the marsh, driving the snow in little swirling clouds. Light clouds lay in patches against the sky, and between them the stars shone with cold, metallic brilliance.
Andy could see clearly enough here. The wind was in his back, and taking a short cut, that would reduce the distance by nearly half, he swung out at a trot toward the tilt. He would look there first, and if David were not in the tilt he would follow the trail back to the spruce grove.
By the short cut over the marsh it was not far to the tilt. At the end of a half hour’s steady running Andy reached the woods that bordered the western side of the marsh. It was here, at the edge of the forest, that he and David had parted the previous morning.
The storm had obliterated every trace of their snowshoe tracks, but Andy stooped to hastily search, in the dim starlight, for some recent sign of David’s passing. There was no sign, and in feverish anxiety to reach the tilt he tried to run, but in the shadows of the trees he collided with overhanging limbs, and was compelled to pick his way more slowly. Presently his sharp eyes made out, through an opening, the stovepipe, rising above the drift which marked the position of the tilt.