68 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



bear the pressure of the foot for only an instant. As 

 soon as the weight of the body came, down went the foot 

 through to the ice below. Trudging thus through freezing 

 water, while the edge of the thin surface-ice cut the skin 

 at every step, and this for a distance of two miles, proved 

 the most trying incident of the whole journey ; but the 

 sense of having reached the northern coast sustained them. 

 A mile or two now brought them to the point whence they 

 had again to strike across country to Conception Bay. The 

 distance was still about a dozen miles, but along a regular 

 beaten track, and they did it jauntily. Near nightfall they 

 reached the head of Spaniard's Bay, and presently walked 

 into the familiar streets of the town of Harbour Grace, 

 where, at the house of his friend Charley St. John, Gosse 

 parted from his trapper pilot, and received a cordial greet- 

 ing from the whole of the affectionate St. John family. A 

 letter from Mr. St. John takes up the tale. " Have you for- 

 gotten," he says forty years later (1868), "the night when, 

 on your return from St. Mary's to Carbonear, you stopped 

 at my father's, and when I kept you awake until near day- 

 break relating what had occurred during your absence, till 

 my father had to tap at the partition to stop our clacking 

 and laughing ? And how, when you went over next day, 

 the lads were disappointed at finding their bottled ale all 

 fizzled down flat and stale ? " Very shortly after this, W. C. 

 St. John married, under somewhat romantic circumstances, 

 and thenceforward began to run over to Harbour Grace 

 for two or three nights of each week, returning to the office 

 in the early morning. Still, he was not quite the same to 

 his friends as before, and the marriage of a clerk without 

 special consent was not looked upon with favour. Mr. 

 Elson, after a time, intimated that St. John must seek 

 some other employment, and in the autumn of 1830 he 

 ceased to be one of the circle at Carbonear. 



