with a good basin of tea and
our stand-by of beans cooked in fat. I was right about them: they
have great sustaining power. To-morrow we will start at ten
o'clock.

The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards the
rest. Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking. Little could be
seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes. Gaspe Toujours was
drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing by the fire.
The dogs were above in the tent--all but Bouche, who was permitted to be
near his master. Presently the sub-factor rose, took from a knapsack a
small tin pail, and put it near the fire. Then he took five little cups
that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put them also
near the fire. None of the party spoke. A change seemed to pass over the
faces of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky. He smoked on unmoved. At length
Hume spoke cheerily: "Now, men, before we turn in we'll do something in
honour of the day. Liquor we none of us have touched since we started;
but back there in the fort, and maybe in other places too, they will
be thinking of us; so we'll drink a health to them, though it's but a
spoonful, and to the day when we see them again!"

The cups were passed round. The sub-factor measured out a very small
portion to each. They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives
were rigid and isolated and severe. Fireside comforts under fortunate
conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to
expressing their feelings demonstratively. But each man then, save
Cloud-in-the-Sky, had some memory worth a resurrection.

Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example. "To absent
friends and the day when we see them again!" he said; and they all
drank. Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near,
made the sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed,
soft-cheeked habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had
left behind seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come
from the parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in
his homely patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would
write again, no word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for
whom the candles had been lighted and masses had been said.

But Jeff Hyde's eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day
upon the Ma