the
rivers. Towards Fort-a-la-Corne I bent my steps with a strange anxiety,
for at that point I was to intercept the "Winter Express" carrying from
Red River its burden of news to the far-distant forts of the Mackenzie
River. This winter packet had left Fort Garry in mid-December, and
travelling by way of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House and Cumberland, was due
at Fort-a-la-Corne about the 21st January. Anxiously then did I press on
to the little fort, where I expected to get tidings of that strife whose
echoes during the past month had been powerless to pierce the solitudes
of this lone land. With tired dogs whose pace no whip or call could
accelerate, we reached the fort at midday on the 21st. On the river,
'close by, an old Indian met us. Has the packet arrived? "Ask him if the
packet has come," I said. He only stared blankly at me and shook his
head. I had forgotten, what was the packet to him? the capture of a
musk-rat was of more consequence than the capture of Metz. The packet had
not come, I found when we reached the fort, but it was hourly expected,
and I determined to await its arrival.

Two days passed away in wild storms of snow. The wind howled dismally
through the pine woods, but within the logs crackled and flew, and the
board of my host was always set with moose steaks and good things,
although outside, and far down the river, starvation had laid his hand
heavily upon the red man. It had fallen dark some hours on the evening
of the 22nd January when there came a knock at the door of our house; the
raised latch gave admittance to an old travel-worn Indian who held in his
hand a small bundle of papers. He had cached the packet, he said, many
miles down the river, for his dogs were utterly tired out and unable to
move; he had come on himself with a few papers for the fort: the snow
was very deep to Cumberland. He had been eight days in travelling 200
miles; he was tired and starving, and white with drift and storm. Such
was his tale. I tore open the packet--it was a paper of mid-November.
Metz had surrendered; Orleans been retaken; Paris, starving, still held
out; for the rest, the Russians had torn to pieces the Treaty of Paris,
and our millions and our priceless blood had been spilt and spent in vain
on the Peninsula of the Black Sea--perhaps, after all, we would fight? So
the night drew itself out, and the pine-tops began to jag the horizon
before I ceased to read.

Early on the following morning, the expre