had made not very long before. However, my guide was
very clever, and my splendid dogs most sagacious, so we travelled home
most of the way on the same route, even though the original path was
deeply buried by the snow.

The place where our cache had been made was duly reached; and glad
enough were we to obtain the additional supplies it contained, for we
had been on short allowance for some time. The strong arms of my
Indians soon bent down the saplings, untied the bundles and consigned
them to the different dog-sleds. To my surprise, I observed, that at
one of the bundles--the heaviest article in which had been a piece of
pemmican weighing perhaps fifty or sixty pounds--my men were talking and
gesticulating most earnestly. In answer to my inquiries, they said,
that that bundle had been taken down during our absence, and a piece of
pemmican had been cut off and taken away.

"Nonsense!" I replied. "You are surely mistaken. It looks to me just
as it was when we put it up. And then there was not the vestige of a
track here when we returned."

However, in spite of my protestations, my men were confident that some
pemmican had been taken by a stranger, and that the blizzard had covered
up the tracks. With a little more discussion the matter was dropped,
and after a good meal we proceeded on our way.

Months later, along came this strange Indian with the venison and his
story, which we will now let him finish:

"I was out hunting in those forests through which you passed: for they
are my hunting grounds. I found the trail of a moose, and for a long
time I followed it up, but did not succeed in getting a shot. I had
poor success on that hunting trip. Shooting nothing for some days, I
became very hungry. While pushing along through the woods, I came
across your trail and saw your cache. So when I saw it was the
missionary's cache, the friend of the Indian, I was glad, and I said to
myself. If he were here, and knew that I was hungry, he would say:
`Help yourself:'--and that was just what I did. I pulled down a
sapling, and opening the bundle, cut off a piece of pemmican--just
enough to make me feel comfortable under my belt until I could reach my
wigwam, far away. Then I tied up the bundle, fastened it in the
treetop, and let it swing up again. And now I have brought you this
venison, to pay for that pemmican which I took."

Honest man! He had carried the haunch of venison on his back, a
distance of a