water was
nearly up to my armpits. Standing there with the icy current swirling
about me, I said, "What's the use?" It seemed to me I had reached the
limit of human endurance. Instead of trying to struggle on, how much
pleasanter to permit myself to sink beneath the water and thus end it
all! It would be such a relief to die.

Then there came to me the remembrance that it was my duty to live as
long as I could. I must do my best. As long as I had any strength
left, I must exert myself to live. With a great effort I climbed out
on the hard ice, and made my way back to the north shore. Night was
approaching. I staggered into the spruce growth, and there came upon
the same brook I have previously mentioned as crossing. Near its bank
I made my night fire. That fire was within two hundred yards of the
tent. Perhaps it is just as well that I did not know it.

The snow, which had fallen rather mildly, all day, thickened with the
coming of night. All the loose wood was now buried under the snow, and
it was with difficulty that I gathered a scant supply for the night.
My wet rags were freezing hard and stiff. I moved about, half-dazed.
I broke only a few branches for my bed, and sat down. Scarcely had I
done so when a woman's voice came to me, kindly and low and encouraging.

"Hadn't you better break a few more boughs?" it said. "You will rest
better then."

There was no mistaking the voice. It was clear and distinct. It was
the voice of my wife, who had been dead for more than three years. I
remember it did not impress me as being at all strange that my wife,
who was dead, should be speaking to me up there in the Labrador
wilderness. It seemed to me perfectly natural that she should be
looking after my comfort, even as she had done in life. I arose and
broke the boughs.

I am not a spiritist. I have never taken any stock in the theory that
the spirits of the dead are able to communicate with the living. So
far as I have thought about them at all, it has been my opinion that
spiritists are either fools or frauds. But I am endeavouring to give a
faithful account of my feelings and sensations at the time of which I
am writing, and the incident of the voice cannot be ignored. Perhaps
it was all a delusion--an hallucination, if you will, due to the
gradual breaking down of my body and mind. As to that, the reader can
form his own conclusions. Certain it is, that from this time on, when
I needed help