's hand and pressed it,
while his face lighted up with the old familiar grin! We fingered the
birds to make sure they were good and fat. We turned them over and
over and gloated over them. George plucked them at once that we might
see their plump bodies. It is true we were not so very hungry, but
those birds meant that we could travel just so much the farther.

We pushed on that we might make our night camp at the place where we
had held the goose banquet on the 3d of August--that glorious night
when we were so eager to proceed, when the northern lights illuminated
the heavens and the lichens gleamed on the barren hill. Hubbard, I
noticed, was lagging, and I told George quietly to set a slower pace.
Then, to give Hubbard encouragement, I fell to the rear. The boy was
staggering fearfully, and I watched him with increasing consternation.
"We must get him out of here! We must! We must!" I kept saying to
myself. The camping place was only two hundred yards away when he sank
on the trail. I was at his side in a moment. He looked up at me with
a pitiful smile, and spoke so low I could scarcely hear him.

"B'y, I've got to rest here--a little--just a little while...you
understand...My legs--have given out."

"That's right, b'y, take a little rest," I said. "You'll be all right
soon. But rest a little. I'll rest a bit with you; and then we'll
leave your pack here, and you walk to camp light, and I'll come back
for your pack."

In a few minutes he got bravely up. We left his pack and together
walked slowly on to join George at the old goose camp on Goose Creek.
Then I returned for the pack that had been left behind.

George boiled one of the grouse for supper. Hubbard told us he was not
discouraged. His weakness, he said, was only momentary, and he was
sure he would be quite himself in the morning, ready to continue the
march homeward. After supper, as he was lying before the fire, he
asked me, if I was not too tired, to read him the latter part of the
sixth chapter of Matthew. I took the Book and read as he requested,
closing with the words:

"Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is,
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you,
O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we
eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For
after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father
knoweth th