said Mooka, shivering. 
No need of the question, startling and ter¬ 
rible as it was from the lips of a child astray 
in the vast solitudes; for a great gale had 
swooped down from the Arctic, blotting out in clouds 
of whirling snow the world of plain and mountain and 
forest that, a moment before, had stretched wide and still 
before the little hunters’ eyes. 
For an hour or more, running like startled deer, they 
had tried to follow their own snow-shoe trail back over 
the wide barrens into the friendly woods; but already 
the snow had filled it brim full, and whatever faint trace 
was left of the long raquettes was caught’up by the gale 
and whirled away with a howl of exultation. Before 
them as they ran every trail of wolf and caribou and 
snow-shoe, and every distant landmark, had vanished; 
103 
