annot understand this.
Convicts on penal servitude for long periods may have some faint notion
of it, but even these have periods of literary intercourse more
frequently than we had. The reader must just take the statement on
trust therefore, that our anxious yearnings were remarkably powerful.
What might not have occurred in these six months of dark silence! Who
might not have been married, born, laid low by sickness, banished to the
ends of the earth like ourselves, or even removed by death!

Is it surprising, then, that we caught our breath and flushed, and that
our hearts leaped when we came unexpectedly upon the track of the two
men who had dragged news from home for hundreds of miles over the snow?
We knew the tracks well. Our intimate acquaintance with every species
of track that was possible in that particular region, rendered a mistake
out of the question. There was the step of the leader, who wore a
snow-shoe the shape of which, although not unknown, was somewhat
unfamiliar to us. There was the print of the sled, or toboggan, which
was different in pattern from those used at Dunregan, and there was the
footprint of the man in rear, whose snow-shoe also made an unfamiliar
impression.

"The packet!" exclaimed Lumley, opening his solemn grey eyes to their
widest as he looked up from the track to me.

"At last!" I returned, unconsciously betraying the prolonged state of
suspense with which my mind had been afflicted.

"Come along!" said my companion, starting off homeward at a pace that
was almost too much for me.

We soon reached the outpost, and there stood the makers of the track
which had roused in us so much excitement.

Two strong men, chosen expressly for a duty which required mental
endurance and perseverance as well as physical vigour. They stood at
the door of the entrance-hall, talking with Mr Strang, the one with his
snow-shoes slung over his shoulder on the butt of his gun, the other
using the same implements as a rest for his hands, while Spooner, in a
state of great excitement, was hastily undoing the lashings of the sled,
to get at the precious box which contained "the packet."

"Well, gentlemen, here it is at last," said our chief, with a genial
smile as we came up.

"Yes, we followed the track immediately we struck it," said Lumley,
stooping to assist Spooner in his work.

We soon had the box carried to our chief's private room, while the two
strangers were had off by our men to