down before him like grass, larger ones he turned aside, and thick ones
he went crashing through like an African elephant through jungle, while
the fine frosted snow went flying from his snow-shoes right and left.
There was no hesitancy or wavering as to direction or pace. The land he
was acquainted with, every inch. Reserve force, he knew, lay stored in
every muscle, and he was prepared to draw it all out when fatigue should
tell him that revenue was expended and only capital remained.

As the sun went down the moon rose up. He had counted on this and on
the fact that the land was comparatively open. Yet it was not
monotonous. Now he was crossing a stretch of prairie at top speed, anon
driving through a patch of woodland. Here he went striding over the
surface of a frozen river, or breasting the slope of a small hill. As
the night wore on he tightened his belt but did not halt to do so. Once
or twice he came to a good-sized lake where all impediments vanished.
Off went the snowshoes and away he went over the marble surface at a
slow trot--slow in appearance, though in reality quicker than the
fastest walk.

Then the moon went down and the grey light of morning--Christmas
morning--dawned. Still the red-man held on his way unchanged--
apparently unchangeable. When the sun was high, he stopped suddenly
beside a fallen tree, cleared the snow off it, and sat down to eat. He
did not sit long, and the breakfast was a cold one.

In a few minutes the journey was resumed. The Indian was drawing
largely on his capital now, but, looking at him, you could not have told
it. By a little after six o'clock that evening the feat was
accomplished, and, as I have said, Big Otter presented himself at a
critical moment to the wonder-stricken eyes of the wedding guests.

"Did they make much of him?" you ask. I should think they did! "Did
they feed him?" Of course they did--stuffed him to repletion--set him
down before the massive ruins of the plum-puddinn, and would not let him
rise till the last morsel was gone! Moreover, when Big Otter discovered
that he had arrived at Fort Wichikagan, not only on Christmas Day, but
on Chief Lumley's wedding-day, his spirit was so rejoiced that his
strength came back again unimpaired, like Sampson's, and he danced that
night with the pale-faces, till the small hours of the morning, to the
strains of a pig-in-its-agonies fiddle, during which process he consumed
several buckets of hot tea