build the fire in the
snow on green logs laid close together--his to chop enough wood to cook
breakfast the next morning. All this they had arranged before they left
the Big Chimney.

That they did not cover more ground that first day was a pure chance,
not likely to recur, due to an unavoidable loss of time at Pymeut.

Knowing the fascination that place exercised over his companion, the
Colonel called a halt about seven miles off from the Big Chimney, that
they might quickly despatch a little cold luncheon they carried in
their pockets, and push on without a break till supper.

"We've got no time to waste at Pymeut," observes the Colonel
significantly.

"I ain't achin' to stop at Pymeut," says his pardner with a superior
air, standing up, as he swallowed his last mouthful of cold bacon and
corn-bread, and cheerfully surveyed the waste. "Who says it's cold,
even if the wind is up? And the track's bully. But see here, Colonel,
you mustn't go thinkin' it's smooth glare-ice, like this, all the way."

"Oh, I was figurin' that it would be." But the Boy paid no heed to the
irony.

"And it's a custom o' the country to get the wind in your face, as a
rule, whichever way you go."

"Well, I'm not complainin' as yet."

"Reckon you needn't if you're blown like dandelion-down all the way to
Minook. Gee! the wind's stronger! Say, Colonel, let's rig a sail."

"Foolishness."

"No, sir. We'll go by Pymeut in an ice-boat, lickety split. And it'll
be a good excuse for not stopping, though I think we ought to say
good-bye to Nicholas."

This view inclined the Colonel to think better of an ice-boat. He had
once crossed the Bay of Toronto in that fashion, and began to wonder if
such a mode of progression applied to sleds might not aid largely in
solving the Minook problem.

While he was wondering the Boy unlashed the sled-load, and pulled off
the canvas cover as the Colonel came back with his mast. Between them,
with no better tools than axe, jack-knives, and a rope, and with
fingers freezing in the south wind, they rigged the sail.

The fact that they had this increasingly favourable wind on their very
first day showed that they were specially smiled on by the great
natural forces. The superstitious feeling that only slumbers in most
breasts, that Mother Nature is still a mysterious being, who has her
favourites whom she guards, her born enemies whom she baulks, pursues,
and finally overwhelms, the age-old childishness sti