journey, but if there is no tilt the cotton tent is pitched. In likely
places traps are set for marten, mink or fox. Ice prevents trapping
for the otter in winter, but they are often shot.

At the end of a week or fortnight the partners meet at the base tilt.
Otherwise each man is alone, and we may imagine how glad they are to
see each other when the meeting time comes. But they cannot be idle.
Out through the snow-covered forest, along the shores of frozen lakes
and on wide bleak marshes the trapper has one hundred traps at least,
and some of them as many as three hundred. The men must keep busy to
look after them properly, and so, after a Sunday's rest together they
again separate and are away on their snowshoes hauling their toboggans
after them.

At Christmas time they go back to their homes, down by the sea, to see
their wives and children and to make merry for a week. What a meeting
that always is! How eagerly the little ones have been looking forward
to the day when Daddy would come! O, that blessed Christmas week! But
it is only seven days long, and on the second day of January the
trappers are away again to their tilts and trails and traps. Again
early in March they visit their homes for another week, and then again
return to the deep wilderness to remain there until June.

Sometimes the father never comes back, and then the wilderness carries
in its heart the secret of his end. Then, oh, those hours of happy
expectancy that become days of grave anxiety and finally weeks of
black despair! Such a case happened once when I was in Labrador. Later
they found the young trapper's body where the man had perished,
seventy miles from his home.

As I have said, the life of the trapper is filled with adventure. Many
a narrow escape he has, but he never loses his grit. He cannot afford
to. Gilbert Blake was one of four trappers that rescued me several
years ago, when I had been on short rations in the wilderness for
several weeks, and without food for two weeks. I had eaten my
moccasins, my feet were frozen and I was so weak I could not walk.
Gilbert and I have been friends since then and we later traveled the
wilderness together. Gilbert has no trapping partner. His "path" is a
hundred miles inland from his home. All winter, with no other
companion than a little dog, he works alone in that lonely wilderness.

One winter game was scarce, and Gilbert's provisions were practically
exhausted when he set out to strike up