GABRIEL CONROY. 
a slight brightening of the sky toward the 
east. The grim outlines of the distant hills 
returned, and the starved white flank of the 
mountain began to glisten. Across its gaunt 
hollow some black object was moving. 
Moving slowly and laboriously — moving 
with such an uncertain mode of progression 
that at first it was difficult to detect whether 
it was brute or human — sometimes on all 
fours, sometimes erect, again hurrying for- 
ward like a drunken man, but always with 
a certain definiteness of purpose, toward the 
canon. 
As it approached nearer you saw that it 
was a man. A haggard man, ragged and 
enveloped in a tattered buffalo robe, but still 
a man, and a determined one. A young 
man, despite his bent figure and wasted 
limbs — a young man despite the premature 
furrows that care and anxiety had set upon 
his brow and in the corners of his rigid 
mouth — a young man notwithstanding the 
expression of savage misanthropy with which 
suffering and famine had overlaid the frank 
impulsiveness of youth. 
When he reached the tree at the entrance 
of the canon, he brushed the film of snow 
from the canvas placard, and then leaned 
for a few moments exhaustedly against its 
trunk. There was something in the aban- 
donment of his attitude that indicated even 
more pathetically than his face and figure 
his utter prostration — a prostration quite in- 
consistent with any visible cause. When he 
had rested himself, he again started forward 
with a nervous intensity, shambling, shuffling, 
falling, stopping to replace the rudely ex- 
temporized snow-shoes of fir bark that fre- 
quently slipped from his feet, but always 
starting on again with the feverishness of 
one who doubted even the sustaining power 
of his will. 
A mile beyond the tree the canon nar- 
rowed and turned gradually to the south, 
and at this point a thin curling cloud of 
smoke was visible that seemed to rise from 
some crevice in the snow. As he came 
nearer, the impression of recent foot-prints 
began to show; there was some displace- 
ment of the snow around a low mound from 
which the smoke now plainly issued. Here 
he stopped, or rather lay down, before an 
opening or cavern in the snow, and uttered 
a feeble shout. It was responded to still 
more feebly. Presently a face appeared 
above the opening, and a ragged figure like 
his own, then another, and then another, 
until eight human creatures, men and women, 
surrounded him in the snow, squatting like 
VOL. XL — 2. 
animals, and like animals lost to all sense 
of decency and shame. 
They were so haggard, so faded, so for- 
lorn, so wan, — so piteous in their human 
aspect, or rather all that was left of a human 
aspect, — that they might have been wept over 
as they sat there; they were so brutal, so 
imbecile, unreasoning and grotesque in these 
newer animal attributes, that they might 
have provoked a smile. They were origi- 
nally country people, mainly of that social 
class whose self-respect is apt to be depend- 
ent rather on their circumstances, position 
and surroundings, than upon any individual 
moral power or intellectual force. They had 
lost the sense of shame in the sense of equal- 
ity of suffering; there was nothing within 
them to take the place of the material enjoy- 
ments they were losing. They were childish 
without the ambition or emulation of child- 
hood ; they were men and women without 
the dignity or simplicity of man and woman- 
hood. All that had raised them above the 
level of the brute was lost in the snow. 
Even the characteristics of sex were gone ; 
an old woman of sixty quarreled, fought, 
and swore with the harsh utterance and un- 
gainly gestures of a man ; a young man of 
scorbutic temperament wept, sighed, and 
fainted with the hysteria of a woman. So 
profound was their degradation that the 
stranger who had thus evoked them from 
the earth, even in his very rags and sadness, 
seemed of another race. 
They were all intellectually weak and ^ . 
helpless, but one, a woman, appeared to g m 
have completely lost her mind. She carried ' ^ 
a small blanket wrapped up to represent a 
child — the tangible memory of one that had 
starved to death in her arms a few days be- 
fore — and rocked it from side to side as she 
sat, with a faith that was piteous. But even 
more piteous was the fact that none of her 
companions took the least notice, either by 
sympathy or complaint, of her aberration. 
When a few moments later she called upon 
them to be quiet, for that “ baby ” was asleep, 
they glared at her indifferently and went on. 
A red-haired man, who was chewing a piece 
of buffalo hide, cast a single murderous 
glance at her, but the next moment seemed 
to have forgotten her presence in his more 
absorbing occupation. 
The stranger paused a moment rather to 
regain his breath than to wait for their more 
orderly and undivided attention. Then he 
uttered the single word : 
“ Nothing !” 
Nothing.” They all echoed the word, 
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