He crawled to the top of the second, using his pulseless hands like sticks in the snow, and at the top something rose from the other side of the drift to meet him.
It was a face, a fierce, bearded face, the gaunt starvation in it hidden by his own blindness.

It seemed like the face of an ogre, terrible, threatening, and he knew that it was the face of William DeBar, the seventh brother.
He launched himself forward, and the other launched himself forward, and they met in a struggle which was pathetic in its weakness, and rolled together to the bottom of the drift.

Yet the struggle was no less terrible because of that weakness.

It was a struggle between two lingering sparks of human life and when these two sparks had flickered and blazed and died down, the two men lay gasping, an arm's reach from each other.
Philip's eyes went to the fire.

It was a small fire, burning more brightly as he looked, and he longed to throw himself upon it so that the flames might eat into his flesh.