Megaleep the Wanderer. 13 



before I was halfway the flakes were driving thick 

 and soft in my face. Another half-mile, and one 

 could not see fifty feet in any direction. Still I kept 

 on, holding my course by the wind and my compass. 

 Then, at the foot of the second barren, my snowshoes 

 stumbled into great depressions in the snow, and I 

 found myself on the fresh trail of my caribou again. 

 " If I am lost, I will at least have a caribou steak, and 

 a skin to wrap me up in," I said, a'nd plunged after 

 them. As I went, the old Mother Goose, rhyme of 

 nursery days came back and set itself to hunting 

 music : 



Bye, baby bunting, 



Daddy 's gone a-hunting, 



For to catch a rabbit skin 



To wrap the baby bunting in. 



Presently I began to sing it aloud. It cheered one 

 up in the storm, and the lilt of it kept time to the 

 leaping kind of gallop which is the easiest way to 

 run on snowshoes : " Bye, baby bunting ; bye, baby 

 bunting— Hello!" 



A dark mass loomed suddenly up before me on the 

 open barren. The storm lightened a bit, before set- 

 ting in heavier; and there were the caribou just in 

 front of me, standing in a compact mass, the weaker 

 ones in the middle. They had no thought nor fear 



