70 ON SNOW-SHOES TO THE BARREN GROUNDS 



trees and were travelling in the muskeg. I shall always 

 remember that morning as giving me the most beautiful 

 picture I ever beheld in Nature's album : the sun coming 

 up on my right, the moon going down on my left one 

 bursting forth in all his golden splendor, while the other 

 slowly withdrew her silvery light. And between and far 

 below the two heavenly rivals plodded John and the dogs 

 and I, footsore and hungry, but appreciative. 



I was destined to be brought to earth very suddenly and 

 somewhat ingloriously, for the sun had but just dispelled 

 the gray gloom of early morning, and I was clipping along 

 at a merry gait across the deadly muskeg, with a large lake 

 in sight, and John and the dogs not far behind, when down 

 I tumbled in a heap with a sprained ankle. Sitting in the 

 snow chafing my ankle was not going to bring us food nor 

 get me to the Barren Grounds, so I wound moose-skin 

 tightly about the injured part, and too'k my place again 

 before the dogs. At first I could not stand without the 

 aid of a stout stick, and we made headway so slowly that 

 after a few miles I threw away my crutch, and in a deter- 

 mination to try the power of mind over matter limped on. 



I should not advise Christian scientists to put their 

 faith to such a test ; no convert was ever more open to 

 conviction than I spirit willing, mind receptive, but the 

 flesh so mortally weak that every time I put down my left 

 foot it gave way to the knee. And so, faith failing, I 

 vowed to get on in the only way remaining. After a while 

 the pain grew duller, and, my leg giving under me, I dis- 

 covered the tight binding and the cold had frozen the 

 flesh. As I could not navigate without the support of the 

 moose-skin binding, and a frozen ankle, though less pain- 

 ful, held me up not so well as a twisted one, I was there- 

 after occupied quite as much in keeping that ankle alive in 

 all its painful sensitiveness as I was in keeping it going at 



