e to look at, but
wonderfully civilised in conduct, for the influence of Christian love
was there, and that influence is the same everywhere. Leathern garments
clothed the men; curtailed petticoats adorned the women; both wore
leggings and moccasins. The boys and girls were similarly costumed, and
all had brilliant teeth, brown faces, glittering eyes, lank black hair,
and a look of eager expectancy.

The pastor went to the head of the table, and silence ensued while he
briefly asked God's blessing on the feast. Then, when expectation had
reached its utmost point, there was a murmur. Where was the smallest
mite of all the guests? Nobody knew. Poosk's mother said she had sent
him off hours ago, and had thought that he must be there. Poosk's
father--a very tall man, with remarkably long legs,--hearing this,
crossed the room in three strides, put on his five-feet by fifteen-inch
snow-shoes and went off into the forest at express speed.

Anxiety is not an easily-roused condition in the North American Indian.
The feast began, despite the absence of our waif; and the waif's mother
set to work with undiminished appetite. Meanwhile the waif himself went
farther and farther astray--swayed alternately by the spirit of the
stoic and the spirit of the little child. But little Poosk was made of
sterling stuff, and the two spirits had a hard battle in him for the
mastery that wintry afternoon. His chase of the rabbit was brought to
an abrupt conclusion by a twig which caught one of his snow-shoes,
tripped him up, and sent him headlong into the snow. When snow averages
four feet in depth it affords great scope for ineffectual floundering.
The snow-shoes kept his feet near the surface, and the depth prevented
his little arms from reaching solid ground. When at last he recovered
his perpendicular, his hair, eyes, nose, ears, sleeves, and mittens were
stuffed with snow; and the child-spirit began to whimper, but the stoic
sprang on him and quickly crushed him down.

Drawing his little body up with a look of determination, and wiping away
the tears which had already begun to freeze on his eyelashes, our little
hero stepped out more vigorously than ever, in the full belief that
every yard carried him nearer home, though in reality he was straying
farther and farther from his father's track. Well was it for little
Poosk that day that his hope of reaching home did not depend on his own
feeble efforts. Already the father was tr