e capable of walking forty miles on snow-shoes
in ordinary circumstances. My being tired and the darkness of night,
were against me, but what of that? it would only require me to brace
myself to a severer task than usual!

I had not gone many miles, however, on the return journey, when a doubt
occurred as to whether I was taking the right direction. In the
confidence of my knowledge of the country I had carelessly left my old
track, which was indeed rather a devious one, and had struck what I
believed to be a straight line for the fort. It was by that time too
late to retrace my steps and too dark to distinguish the features of the
landscape. I stopped for a minute to think, and as I did so the
profound oppressive silence of the night, the weird pallid aspect of the
scarce visible snow, and the dark pines around me, which were only a
shade or two darker than the black sky above, together with the
ever-increasing cold, made such an impression on my mind that the
prayer, "God help me!" burst almost involuntarily from my lips.

Feeling that delay surely meant death, I started off again with
redoubled energy, and this impulse of determination, along with the
exercise, increased my temperature somewhat, so that hope became strong
again, and with it muscular energy.

Suddenly I came upon a snow-shoe track. I went down on my knees to
examine it, but the light was insufficient to make it out clearly. What
would I not have given for a match at that moment! However, as the size
of the shoe-print seemed to my _feeling_ the same with that of the shoe
I wore, I concluded that it must certainly be my own track out from
home--all the more that it ran almost parallel with the line I was
following.

Getting upon it then, I stepped out with much greater ease and with a
lighter heart.

After a time the track led me to a slightly open space where the light
was better. I thought that objects seemed familiar to me as I looked
round. Advancing, I came on a spot where the snow was much trodden
down. There was a bank of snow near. I went towards it while a
terrible suspicion flashed into my mind. Yes, it was the very spot on
which I had been sitting hours before, while I was making fruitless
efforts to obtain a light from the flint of my gun! I had been doing
that of which I had often read and heard, walking unwittingly in a
circle, and had actually come back to the spot from which I set out.

What my feelings were on making