sterday."

SNOW-SHOES AND SLEDGES.[1]

BY KIRK MUNROE.

CHAPTER XXXV.

HOW JALAP COOMBS MADE PORT.

The things on which we are apt to set the highest value in this world
are those that we have lost, and even our friends are, as a rule, most
highly appreciated after they have been taken from us. Thus, in the
present instance, Phil and Serge had so sincerely mourned the loss of
their quaint but loyal comrade, that his restoration to them alive and
well, "hearty _and_ hungry," as he himself expressed it, filled them
with unbounded joy. They hung about him, and lovingly brushed the snow
from his fur clothing, and plied him with many questions.

Even Nel-te showed delight at the return of his big playmate by cuddling
up to him, and stroking his weather-beaten cheeks, and confiding to him
how very hungry he was.

"Me too, Cap'n Kid!" exclaimed Jalap Coombs; "and I must say you're a
mighty tempting mossel to a man as nigh starved as I be. Jest about
boiling age, plump _and_ tender. Cap'n Kid, look out, for I'm mighty
inclined to stow ye away."

"Try this instead," laughed Phil, holding out a chunk of frozen pemmican
that he had just chopped off. "We're in the biggest kind of luck
to-day," he continued. "I didn't know there was a mouthful of anything
to eat on this sledge, and here I've just found about five pounds of
pemmican. It does seem to me the very best pemmican that was ever put
up, too, and I only wonder that we didn't eat it long ago. I'm going to
get my aunt Ruth to make me a lot of it just as soon as ever I get
home."

As they sat before the fire on a tree felled and stripped of its
branches for the purpose, and munched frozen pemmican, and took turns in
sipping strong unsweetened tea from the only cup now left to them, Jalap
Coombs described his thrilling experiences of the preceding night.

According to his story, one of his dogs gave out, and he stopped to
unharness it with the hope that it would still have strength to follow
the sledge. While he was thus engaged the storm broke, the blinding rush
of snow swept over the mountains, and as he looked up he found to his
dismay that the other sledge was already lost to view. He at once
started to overtake it, urging on the reluctant dogs by every means in
his power; but after a few minutes of struggle against the furious gale,
they lay down and refused to move. After cutting their traces that they
might follow him if they chose, the man set forth