old David Grey, who had told the
tale of McLeod and the tomahawks, called to Billy Topsail and his
friends. A bronzed, pleasant-appearing man, David's friend, shook
hands with the boys with the grip of a woodsman. Presently he drifted
into a tale of his own boyhood at Fort Red Wing in the wilderness far
back of Quebec. "You see," said he, "my father had never fallen into
the habit of coddling me. So when the lost Hudson Bay Geological
Expedition made Fort Red Wing in the spring--every man exhausted,
except the young professor, who had broken a leg a month back, and had
set it with his own hands--it was the most natural thing in the world
that my father should command me to take the news to Little Lake,
whence it might be carried, from post to post, all the way to the
department at Ottawa.

"'And send the company doctor up,' said he. 'The little professor's
leg is in a bad way, if I know anything about doctoring. So you'll
make what haste you can.'

"'Yes, sir,' said I.

"'Keep to the river until you come to the Great Bend. You can take the
trail through the bush from there to Swift Rapids. If the ice is
broken at the rapids, you'll have to go round the mountain. That'll
take a good half day longer. But don't be rash at the rapids, and keep
an eye on the ice all along. The sun will be rotting it by day now. It
looks like a break-up already.'

"'Shall I go alone, sir?' said I.

"'No,' said my father, no doubt perceiving the wish in the question.
'I'll have John go with you for company.'

"John was an Indian lad of my own age, or thereabouts, who had been
brought up at the fort--my companion and friend. I doubt if I shall
ever find a stancher one.

"With him at my heels and a little packet of letters in my breast
pocket, I set out early the next day. It was late in March, and the
sun, as the day advanced, grew uncomfortably hot.

"'Here's easy going!' I cried, when we came to the river.

"'Bad ice!' John grunted.

"And it proved to be so--ice which the suns of clear weather had
rotted and the frosts of night and cold days had not repaired. Rotten
patches alternated with spaces of open water and of thin ice, which
the heavy frost of the night before had formed.

"When we came near to Great Bend, where we were to take to the woods,
it was late in the afternoon, and the day was beginning to turn cold.

"We sped on even more cautiously, for in that place the current is
swift, and we knew that the water was runn