shook her head as she did so.

"There's nothing there, daddy. I turned it inside out last time."

"Wow! but it's ill to bear!" exclaimed old Duncan, with a
half-suppressed groan.

Meanwhile his daughter put the tin kettle on the fire and prepared their
last cup of tea. When it was ready she looked up with a peculiar
expression on her face, as she drew something from her pocket.

"Look here, daddy," she said, holding up a bit of pemmican about the
size of a hen's egg.

The old man snatched it from her, and, biting off a piece, began to chew
with a sort of wolfish voracity.

"I reserved it till now," said the girl, "for I knew that this being the
second night, you would find it impossible to get to sleep at all
without something in you, however small. If you manage to sleep on this
and the cup of hot tea, you'll maybe rest well till morning--and then--"

"God forgive me!" exclaimed the old man, suddenly pausing, as he was
about to thrust the last morsel into his mouth; "hunger makes me
selfish. I wass forgettin' that you are starvin' too, my tear. Open
your mouth."

"No, father, I don't want it. I really don't feel hungry."

"Elspie, my shild," said old Duncan, in a tone of stern remonstrance,
"when wass it that you began to tell lies?"

"I'm telling the truth, daddy. I did feel hungry yesterday, but that
has passed away, and to-day I feel only a little faint."

"Open your mouth, I'm tellin' you," repeated old Duncan in a tone of
command which long experience had taught Elspie promptly to obey. She
received the morsel, ate it with much relish, and wished earnestly for
more.

"Now, you'll lie down and go to sleep," she said, after her father had
washed down the last morsel of food with the last cup of hot tea, "and
I'll gather a few more sticks to keep the fire going till morning. I
think it is not so cold as it was, and the wind is quite gone. They
have been away five days now, or more. I think that God, in His mercy,
will send us relief in the morning."

"You are a goot lass, my tear," said the old man, allowing himself to be
made as comfortable as it was in his daughter's power to accomplish;
"what you say is ferry true. The weather feels warmer, and the wind is
down. Perhaps they will find us in the mornin'. Goot-night, my tear."

It was one of the characteristics of this testy old man, that he
believed it quite possible for a human being to get on quite well enough
in this world without