me time he had
felt himself flagging, dropping behind, and then recovering; but all at
once his legs gave way, and he collapsed in a heap on the ice, half
unconscious from fatigue.

Macgregor and Stark bent over him.

"Got to put him on the toboggan," declared the Scotchman.

Maurice felt that it was madness for two of them to try to haul the
greater load, but without protest he helped to roll the dazed youngster
in the blankets, and to strap him on the sledge. The next stage always
seemed to him a sort of waking nightmare; he never quite knew how long
it lasted. The wind bore against him like a wall; the drag of the
toboggan seemed intolerable. Half dead with exhaustion and fatigue, he
fixed his eyes on Macgregor's broad back, and went on with short,
forced strokes, with the feeling that each marked the extreme limit of
his strength.

Suddenly his leader stopped. A great black space seemed to have opened
in the white road ahead.

"Another portage!" Macgregor shouted in Maurice's ear.

A long, unfrozen rapid was thundering in the gloom. With maddening
difficulty, Maurice and Macgregor hacked a road through willow thickets
and got the toboggan past.

Again they were on the ice, with the rapid behind them. It seemed to
Maurice that the horror of that exertion would never end; then suddenly
the night seemed to turn pitch black, and he felt himself shaken by the
shoulder.

"Get on the toboggan, Maurice! Come, wake up!" Macgregor was saying.
"Wake up!"

Dimly he realized that he was sitting on the ice--that they had
stopped--that Fred was up again. Too stupefied to question anything,
he rolled into the blanket out of which Fred had crawled, and instantly
went sound asleep.

It seemed only a moment until he was roused again. Drunk with sleep,
he clutched the towrope blindly, while Fred, who was completely done
this time, again took his place on the sledge. Only Macgregor seemed
proof against fatigue. Bent against the gale, he skated vigorously at
the forward end of the line, and his strong voice shouted back
encouragements that Maurice hardly heard.

The snow was now growing so deep on the ice that the skates ploughed
through it with difficulty. Still the boys labored on, minute after
minute, mile after mile. Maurice felt numb with fatigue and half
asleep as he skated blindly, and suddenly he ran sharply into
Macgregor, who had stopped short. There was another break just
ahead--a long cascade thi