in
the tent with the words, "Your pistol, Wallace." I handed it out to
him, and almost immediately we heard a shot. Then George reappeared,
holding up another spruce-grouse.

"This grub came right to us," he said; "I knocked the beggar over close
by the fire."

While we were eating the bird, Hubbard told us he had been dreaming
during the night of home. Nearly every day now we heard that he had
been dreaming the night before of his wife or his mother; they were
always giving him good things to eat, or he was going to good dinners
with them.

It had rained hard during the night, but with early morning there came
again the mixture of rain and snow we had endured on the day before.
When we put off in the canoe, we headed for the point where we expected
to make the portage across the two-mile neck of land that separated
Lake Disappointment from Lost Trail Lake; but soon we were caught by a
terrific gale, and for half an hour we sat low in the canoe doing our
best with the paddles to keep it headed to the wind and no one speaking
a word. The foam dashed over the sides of our little craft, soaking us
from head to foot. Tossed violently about by the big seas, we for a
time expected that every moment would be our last. Had George been
less expert with the stern paddle, we surely should have been swamped.
As it was we managed, after a desperate struggle, to gain the lee side
of a small, rocky island, upon which we took refuge.

At length the wind abated and the lake became calmer, and, venturing
out once more, we made for the mainland some distance to the west of
where we had intended to make our portage. There we stumbled upon a
river of considerable size flowing in a southwesterly direction from
Lake Disappointment into Lost Trail Lake. This river we had missed on
the up trail and here had lost the old Indian trail to Michikamau. I
volunteered to take my rifle and hunt across the neck of land
separating the two lakes while Hubbard and George ran the rapids; but
presently I heard them calling to me, and, returning to the river,
found them waiting on the bank.

"We'll camp just below here for the night," said Hubbard, "and finish
the river in the morning. I couldn't manage my end of the canoe in a
rapid we were shooting and we got on a rock. You'd better shoot the
rapids with George after this."

I suppose Hubbard's weakness prevented him from turning the canoe
quickly enough when occasion required, and he rea