noe down
the river at a rapid pace. In two minutes they were out of sight round
a bend.

There was a dead silence. Fred could not meet the eyes of his
companions. He turned away, pretended to look for something, and
fairly broke down.

"Brace up, Fred!" said his brother. "It can't be helped, and we're not
blaming you. It might have happened to any of us."

"If you'd been awake you might have got shot," said Mac, "and that
would have been a good deal worse for every one concerned."

But Fred was inconsolable. Through his tears, he stammered that he
wished he had been shot. They had lost the foxes, they were stranded
and destitute, and they stood a good chance of never getting out alive.

"Nonsense!" said Mac, with forced cheerfulness. "We were in a far
worse fix last winter, and we came out on top."

"The first thing to do is to have some grub," added Horace. "Then
we'll talk about it."

Looking with calculating eyes at the lump of meat, he cut the slices of
venison very thin. There was about twenty pounds left. They roasted
the meat he had cut off, and ate it; then Horace unfolded his pocket
map and spread it on the ground.

They were probably forty miles from the Height of Land. It was twelve
miles across the long carry, and at least forty more to the nearest
inhabited point--almost a hundred miles in all. There was a chance,
however, that they might meet some party of prospectors or Indians.

"It's terribly rough traveling afoot," said Horace. "We could hardly
make it in less than two weeks. Besides, our shoes are nearly gone
now."

"And that piece of venison will never last us for two weeks!" cried
Macgregor.

"Oh, you can often knock down a partridge with a stick," said Horace.

"If we only had a canoe!" Mac exclaimed, with a burst of rage. "I'd
run those thieves down if I had to follow them to Hudson Bay!"

They all agreed on that point, but it was useless to think of following
them without a canoe. The boys would have all they could do to save
their own lives; a hundred-mile journey on foot across that wilderness,
without arms and with almost no provisions, was a desperate undertaking.

"Well, we've got no choice," said Horace, after a dismal silence. "We
must put ourselves on rations of about half a pound of meat a day, and
we'll lay a bee-line course by the compass for the trail over the
Height of Land."

He marked the course on the map, and the boys studied it in silence.
T