ht some spirits with me. It will start fresh
life in him if he's not too far gone already. Here, sir," he continued,
in a louder tone, "let me put this to your lips."

The youth opened a pair of brilliant black eyes and gazed earnestly at
the speaker, then smiled faintly and sipped the offered beverage.

As might have been expected, he at once revived a little under its
influence.

"There, that's enough just now; it don't do to take much at a time.
I'll give 'ee somethin' else in a minute," said Bellew, as he went from
one to another and administered a teaspoonful or two to each.

They were very grateful, and said so in words more or less emphatic.
One of them, indeed, who appeared to have once been a jovial seaman,
intimated that he would be glad to take as many more teaspoonfuls of
"that same" as Bellew chose to administer! but the trapper, paying no
attention to the suggestion, proceeded to open his store of provisions
and to concoct, in his tin tea-kettle, a species of thin soup. While
this was simmering, he began to remove the blankets with which Bob Smart
had covered the unfortunate men.

"Don't you think," said Bob, "that it would be well to leave their wraps
alone till we get them up to the fort? They're badly bitten, and I know
little about dressing sores. By the time we get there Mr Redding will
probably have returned from Partridge Bay, and he's more than half a a
doctor, I believe."

"Nevertheless I'll have a look," said Bellew, with a smile, "for I'm a
bit of a doctor myself in such matters,--about a quarter of one, if I
may say so."

Without further parley the trapper laid bare their sores, and truly the
sad sight fully justified Smart's remark that the poor fellows were
badly bitten. One of them, the seaman above referred to, whom his
comrades styled Ned, had only lost the ends of one or two toes and the
forefinger of his left hand, but some of the others had been so severely
frost-bitten in their feet that all the toes were rotting off; the negro
in particular had lost his left foot, while the heel-bone of the other
was exposed to the extent of nearly an inch, and all the toes were gone.
(We describe here, from memory, what we have actually seen.)

In perfect silence, but with a despatch that would have done credit to
hospital training, the trapper removed the dead flesh, dressed the
sores, applied poultices of certain herbs gathered in the woods, and
bandaged them up. This done, he serve