feet as I reclined on the boughs.
Twilight came and then darkness, and I, lying before the crackling
flames, wondered, as they burned ever brighter, whether Donald and
Allen had yet found Hubbard, and hoped against hope that they had found
him alive. Instinctively I felt that I should prepare for the worst,
but I cudgelled my brain for specious arguments to make myself believe
he had survived, and went on hoping.

My feet had been paining me all day. I tried to take off my socks, but
blood clots held them fast to the raw flesh. The fact was, they had
been frozen. It was hardly to be wondered at--the wonder was, how I,
wandering for ten days in a bitter snowstorm almost naked as to my
lower extremities, escaped with my life. Under ordinary circumstances,
a physician has told me, the exposure would have killed me in short
order; but, having been living in the open for months, I had become
gradually inured to the cold, and the effect of the exposure was thus
greatly mitigated. There were only two or three nights on the entire
trip when any of us went to bed with dry feet, and that none of us ever
had the slightest symptom of a cold certainly speaks volumes for an
out-of-door life.

Although I ate very sparingly on the day the trappers found me, I soon
began to suffer greatly from bloating and nausea. In the night I was
very ill. The boys did everything they could for me. They were
excellent nurses, those rough, brown fellows of the forest,
anticipating my every wish. When once or twice in the night I tried to
walk a few steps from the fire to relieve my nausea, their faces and
actions showed plainly their concern. That I might not stagger into the
fire, they would rise to stand between it and me. One of them remained
awake all night, to keep the fire going and to help me should I need
anything.

The sun was again showing itself above the horizon, setting the expanse
of fir trees and snow aglow, and the boys, having placed the kettle
over the fire for breakfast, were cutting more wood, when Donald and
Allen suddenly came over the bank, as they had done on the morning
before. Their packs were as large as ever, and they had Hubbard's
rifle. I knew at once that the worst had happened. "His wife and
mother!"--like lightning the thought flashed through my mind. A
dizziness came over me, and for a moment I could not breathe. Donald
spoke:

"Yesterday evenin' we found th' tent, sir. He were fastened up tight
w