Harding had cause to remember the forced march he made to the Stony village. The light was faint, and the low ground streaked with haze, as they floundered through the muskeg, sinking deep in the softer spots and splashing through shallow pools. When they reached the first hill bench he was hot and breathless, and their path led sharply upward over banks of ragged stones which had a trick of slipping down when they trod on them. It was worse where the stones were large and they stumbled into the hollows between. Then they struggled through short pine-scrub, crawled up a wet gorge where thick willows grew, and afterward got entangled among thickets of thorny canes. Harding’s clothes were badly torn and his boots giving out; his breath was labored, and his heart beat painfully, but he presse
