The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie.  I was going to surprise her.  She would jump up and run and put her arms about my neck.  I took the shovel, and crawled out on my hands and knees.  I dug it down, and fell over on it like a baby.

After that, I understood.  I’d never had a fever in my life, and it’s not strange that I shouldn’t have known before.

It came all over me in a minute, I think.  I couldn’t shovel through.  Nobody could hear.  I might call, and I might shout.  By and by the fire would go out.  Nancy would not come.  Nancy did not know.  Nancy and I should never kiss and make up now.

I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name, and yelled it out.  Then I crawled out once more into the drift.

I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who’d never known a fear.  I could freeze.  I could burn up there alone in the horrid place with fever.  I could starve.  It wasn’t death nor awfulness I couldn’t face,—­not that, not that; but I loved her true, I say,—­I loved her true, and I’d spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left her those to remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered her husband, as long as she remembered anything.

I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever and the thinking.  I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning.  “God Almighty!  God Almighty!” over and over, not knowing what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my throat.

Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door.  I crawled around the hut on my knees with my hands up over my head, shouting out as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap, into the corner; after that I never stirred.

How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no more notion than the dead.  I knew afterwards; when I knew how they waited and expected and talked and grew anxious, and sent down home to see if I was there, and how she—­But no matter, no matter about that.

I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors.  The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn’t reach round.  Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her.  Then the wood was used up.  I clawed out chips with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little blaze.  By and by I couldn’t pull any more.  Then there were only some coals,—­then a little spark.  I blew at that spark a long while,—­I hadn’t much breath.  One night it went out, and the wind blew in.  One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff.  Beauty had pushed out of the door somehow and gone.  I shut up my eyes.  I don’t think I cared about seeing Bess,—­I can’t remember very well.

Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl, walking round the ashes where the spark went out.  Then again I thought Mary Ann was there, and Isaac, and the baby.  But they never were.  I used to wonder if I wasn’t dead, and hadn’t made a mistake about the place that I was going to.