at Bear Lake. We forget the friend's stake, but it was probably
supposed to be an equivalent.

Suddenly the yo-ho-ing ceased, both hands, tightly closed, were brought
to the front, and the whole party gazed at Mozwa with intense
expectation. He was not long in making up his mind. He pointed to the
left hand. It was opened, and found to be empty! The blanket was lost.
Back went the hands again, and the "yo-ho-ing" was continued. The new
gun was the next stake. It also was lost; and thus the game was carried
on far into the night, with smaller stakes, until Mozwa had lost almost
all that he had brought with him--gun, blanket, pipes, tobacco, flint
and steel, fire-bag, and even his coat, so that he walked home a
half-naked and nearly ruined man!

But ruin in the wilderness of North America is not usually so thorough
as it often is in civilised lands, owing partly to the happy
circumstance that strong drink does not come into play and complete the
moral destruction, as well as the physical, which gambling had begun.
The character therefore, although deteriorated, is not socially lost.
The nature of property, also, and the means of acquiring it, render
recovery more easy.

When Mozwa returned home _minus_ his new blanket and the beautiful
deerskin coat which his wife had made and richly ornamented for him with
her own brown hands while he was away, he found his old coat and his old
blanket ready for him. The old gun, too, was available still, so that
he was not altogether disabled from attending to the duties of the
chase, and in a short time afterwards, "luck" being in his favour, he
had won back some of his lost possessions. But he was too often in that
fluctuating state of alternating excitement and depression which is the
invariable accompaniment, in a greater or less degree, of the gambler's
sin, whether carried on in the depths of the Arctic wilderness, the
well-named "hells" of London, or the gilded _salons_ of Monaco.

"You are a fool," said Nazinred one day to his friend--for even among
savages there are plain-spoken familiar friends gifted with common sense
enough to recognise folly, and spiritual honesty to point it out and
warn against it.

"Why does my brother say so?" asked Mozwa, who was not in the least
offended by the observation.

"Because you gain nothing by all your gaining except trouble and
excitement, and sometimes you gain loss. Here you are, now, obliged to
take to your old gun, whos