es.

Now, reader, you must understand that it was no light duty which lay
before the wanderers that evening. They had to make up for a good many
missed meals. The word "ravenous" scarcely indicates their condition!
They were too hungry to lose time, too tired to speak. Everything,
therefore, was done with quiet vigour. Steaks were impaled on pieces of
stick, and stuck up before the fire to roast. When one side of a steak
was partially done, pieces of it were cut off and devoured while the
other was cooking. At the expense of a little burning of the lips, and
a good deal of roasting of the face, the severe pangs of hunger were
thus slightly allayed, then each man sat down before the blaze with his
back against a tree, his hunting-knife in one hand, a huge rib or steak
in the other, and quietly but steadily and continuously devoured beef!

"Och! when did I iver ait so much before?" exclaimed Larry, dropping a
peeled rib.

"What! not goin' to give in yet?" said Big Ben, setting up another rib
to roast; "why, that'll never do. You must eat till daylight, if you
would be fit to travel in the prairie. Our wild meat never pains one.
You may eat as much as you can hold. That's always the way we do in the
far west. Sometimes we starve for six or eight days at a time, and then
when we get plenty, we lay in good store and pack it well down, always
beginnin' wi' the best pieces first, for fear that some skulkin' Redskin
should kill us before we've had time to enjoy them. See here, you've
only had the first course; rest a bit while I prepare the second."

While he spoke, Ben was breaking up the marrow-bones with his hatchet,
and laying bare the beautiful rolls of "trappers' butter" within.
Having extracted about a pound of marrow, he put it into a gallon of
water, and, mixing along with it a quantity of the buffalo's blood and a
little salt, set it on the fire to boil. In a short time this savoury
soup was ready. Turn not up your noses at it, "ye gentlemen of England,
who live at home at ease," (though, by the way, we doubt the reality of
that "ease," which causes so much dyspepsia amongst you that good food
becomes unpalatable and strong food nauseous), but believe us when we
tell you that the soup was super-excellent.

"Musha!" exclaimed Larry, when he tasted the first spoonful, "I feel
exactly as if I had ait nothin' at all yit--only goin' to begin!" And
with that he and his comrades attacked and consumed the so