there is no provision for
the travelling expenses of coroners, and the nearest was one hundred and
forty or one hundred and fifty miles away, there would have been no
inquest and no such proof.

[Sidenote: A WILDERNESS TRAGEDY]

The man had delayed his return to Bettles too long. When his food was
exhausted and he had to go, there came on that terrible cold spell. A
little memorandum-book in his pocket told the pitiful story. Day by day
he lingered hoping for a change, and day by day there was entry of the
awful cold. He had no thermometer, but he knew the temperature was -50 deg.
or lower by the cracking noise that his breath made--the old-timer's
test. At last the grub was all gone and he must go or starve. The final
entry read: "All aboard to-morrow, hope to God I get there." The Indians
estimated that he had been walking two days, and had "siwashed it" at
night somewhere beside a fire in the open without bedding. Holes were
burned in his breeches in two places, where, doubtless, he had got too
near the fire. He had nothing whatever to eat with him save a piece of
bacon gnawed to the rind. There were only two matches in his pocket, and
they were mixed up with trash of birch-bark and tobacco, so it is likely
he did not know he had them. He had lit all the fires he could light and
eaten all the food he had to eat. Still he was plugging along towards
the native village nine miles away. Then he lost the trail, probably in
the dark, for it was faint and much drifted, and had taken off his
snow-shoes to feel with his moccasined feet for the hardened snow that
would indicate it. That was almost the end. He had gone across the river
and back again, feeling for the trail, and then, with the deadly
numbness already upon his brain, had wandered in a circle. The date of
his starting in the memorandum-book and the distance travelled made it
almost certain that, at some moment between the time when those three
moons floated in the sky and the time when that cross glared on the
horizon, he had fallen in the snow, never to rise again. Fifty-eight
below zero and a wind blowing!

One supposes that the actual death by freezing is painless, as it is
certainly slow and gradual. The only instance of sudden gelation I ever
heard of is in Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus," where the skipper,
having answered one question, upon being asked another,

"Answered never a word,
For a frozen corpse was he."

But if the ac