the day that Bob fell asleep in the snow, he
awoke to new and strange surroundings. His first conscious moments
brought with them a sense of comfortable security. His mind had thrown
off every feeling of responsibility and he knew only that he was warm
and snugly tucked into bed and that the odour of spruce forest and
wood smoke that he breathed was very pleasant. He lay quiet for a
time, with his eyes closed, in a state of blissful, half
consciousness, vaguely realizing these things, but not possessing
sufficient energy to open his eyes and investigate them or question
where he was.

Slowly his mind awoke from its lethargy and then he began to remember
as a dim, uncertain dream, his experience of the night before.
Gradually it became more real but he recalled his failure to find the
tent, the fearful groping in the snow, and his struggle for life
against the storm as something that had happened in the long distant
past.

"But how could all this ha' been happenin' t' me now?" he asked
himself, for here he was snug in the tent--or perhaps he had reached
the tilt and did not remember.

He opened his eyes now for the first time to see and satisfy himself
as to whether it was the tent or the tilt he was in, and what he saw
astonished and brought him to his senses very quickly.

He recognized at once the interior of an Indian wigwam. In the centre
a fire was burning and an Indian woman was leaning over it stirring
the contents of a kettle. On the opposite side of the fire from her
sat a young Indian maiden of about Bob's own age netting the babiche
in a snow-shoe, her fingers plying deftly in and out. The woman and
girl wore deerskin garments of peculiar design. The former was fat and
ugly, the latter slender, and very comely, he thought, from her sleek
black hair to her feet encased in daintily worked little moccasins. At
that moment she glanced towards him and said something to her
companion, who turned in his direction also.

"Where am I?" he asked wonderingly and with some alarm.

They both laughed and jabbered then in their Indian tongue but he
could not understand a word they said. The girl lay aside the
snow-shoe and babiche and, taking up a tin cup, dipped some hot broth
from the kettle and offered it to him. He accepted it gladly for he
was thirsty and felt unaccountably weak. The broth contained no salt
or flavouring of any kind, but was very refreshing. When he had
finished it he put the cup down and atte