sis on the last syllable of the last word which is
eminently suggestive of the Scottish Highlander.

Davidson may have heard the remark, but he made no reply.

Day declined, but its exit was not marked by much difference in the very
feeble light, and the two men held steadily on. The moon came out. As
far as appearances went she might almost as well have stayed in, for
nobody saw her that night. Her mere existence somewhere in the sky,
however, rendered the indescribable chaos visible. Hours passed by, but
still the two men held on their way persistently.

They wore five-feet-long snow-shoes. Progress over the deep snow
without these would have been impossible. One traveller walked behind
the other to get the benefit of his beaten track, but the benefit was
scarcely appreciable, for the whirling snow filled each footstep up
almost as soon as it was made. Two days and a night had these men
travelled with but an hour or two of rest in the shelter of a copse,
without fire, and almost without food, yet they pushed on with the
energy of fresh and well-fed men.

Nothing but some overpowering necessity could have stimulated them to
such prolonged and severe exertion. Even self-preservation might have
failed to nerve them to it, for both had well-nigh reached the limit of
their exceptional powers, but each was animated by a stronger motive
than self. Fergus had left his old father in an almost dying state on
the snow-clad plains, and Davidson had left his affianced bride.

The buffalo-hunt had failed that year; winter had set in with unwonted
severity and earlier than usual. The hunters, with the women and
children who followed them in carts to help and to reap the benefit of
the hunt, were starving. Their horses died or were frozen to death;
carts were snowed up; and the starving hunters had been scattered in
making the best of their way back to the Settlement of Red River from
which they had started.

When old McKay broke down, and his only daughter Elspie had firmly
asserted her determination to remain and die with him, Fergus McKay and
Daniel Davidson felt themselves to be put upon their mettle--called on
to face a difficulty of the most appalling nature. To remain on the
snow-clad prairie without food or shelter would be death to all, for
there was no living creature there to be shot or trapped. On the other
hand, to travel a hundred miles or so on foot--and without food, seemed
an impossibility. Love,