He could resist the call of the world no longer.

Besides, he was hungry.
He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up.

But she only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult.

He went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and crystalline.

He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started.