ountry and the Kipling Mountains. Our day's food consisted of three
trout each at each of our three meals.

Sunday (October 11th) was another perfect day. It was wintry, but we
had become inured to the cold. We each had a pair of skin mittens,
which although practically gone as to the palms, served to protect our
hands from the winds. Before we started forward I read aloud John
xvii. Again in the morning we divided nine little trout among us, and
the remaining eight we had for luncheon. The weather was now so cold
that do what we would we never again could induce a trout, large or
small, to take the bait or rise to the fly.

In the course of the day George took two long shots at ducks, and
missed both times; it would have been phenomenal if he hadn't. There
was one fall that we could not shoot, and we landed on the bank to
unload the canoe. All three of us tried to lift the canoe so as to
carry it about thirty yards down to where we could again launch it, but
we were unable to get it to our heads and it fell to ground with a
crash. Then we looked at one another and understood. No one spoke,
but we all understood. Up to this time Hubbard and I had kept up the
fiction that we were "not so weak," but now all of us knew that
concealment no longer was possible, and the clear perception came to us
that if we ever got out of the wilderness it would be only by the grace
of God.

With difficulty we dragged the canoe to the launching place, and on the
way found the cleaning rod Hubbard's father had made for him, which had
been lost while we were portaging around the fall on our upward
journey. Hubbard picked the rod up tenderly and put it in the canoe.

An hour before sunset we reached Camp Caribou, the place where we had
broiled those luscious steaks that 12th of August and had merrily
talked and feasted far into the night. Having dragged the canoe up on
the sandy shore, we did not wait to unload it, but at once staggered up
the bank to begin our eager search for scraps. The head of the caribou,
dried and worm-eaten, was where we had left it. The bones we had cut
the meat from were there. The remnants of the stomach, partially
washed away, were there. But we found only two hoofs. We had left
three. Up and down and all around the camp we searched for that other
hoof; but it was gone.

"Somebody's taken it," said George. "Somebody's taken it, sure--a
marten or somebody."

When all the refuse we could find