verine walk into an empty trap?"

Billy Rufus spoke passionately now. His genial spirit fled; he reproached
them.

Silver Tassel spoke up loudly: "Let Oshondonto's Great Spirit carry him to
the nets alone, and back again with fish for the heathen the Great Chief
died to save."

"You have a wicked heart, Silver Tassel. You know well that one man can't
handle the boat and the nets also. Is there no one of you--?"

A figure shot forward from a corner. "I will go with Oshondonto," came the
voice of Wingo, the waif of the Crees.

The eye of the mikonaree flashed round in contempt on the tribe. Then
suddenly it softened, and he said to the lad, "We will go together,
Wingo."

Taking the boy by the hand, he ran with him through the rough wind to the
shore, launched the canoe on the tossing lake, and paddled away through
the tempest.

* * * * *

The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and wet snow of a belated
winter, the floating blocks of ice crushing against the side of the boat,
the black water swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world near
and far.... The passage made at last to the nets; the brave Wingo
steadying the canoe--a skilful hand sufficing where the strength of a
Samson would not have availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of
joy from the lips of the waif--a cry that pierced the storm and brought
back an answering cry from the crowd of Indians on the far shore.... The
quarter-hour of danger in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be
dragged, and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going shoreward
jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor behind; heavier seas and winds
roaring down on them as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one
awful moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in the water....
Then both clinging to the upturned canoe as it is driven near and nearer
shore.... The boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm round
clinging--clinging, as the shrieking storm answers to the calling of the
Athabascas on the shore, and drives craft and fish and man and boy down
upon the banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their rescue.... At
last a rope thrown, a drowning man's wrists wound round it, his teeth set
in it--and now, at last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being
carried to the mikonaree's hut and laid upon two beds, one on either side
of the small room, as the red sun goe