his traps preparatory to his
visit home in March. He was several miles from his tilt when suddenly
one of his snowshoes broke beyond repair. He could not move a step
without snowshoes, for the snow lay ten feet deep. He had no skin with
him with which to net another snowshoe, even if he were to make the
frame; and he had nothing to eat.

A Labrador blizzard came on, and Gilbert for three days was held
prisoner in his tent. He spent his time trying to make a serviceable
snowshoe with netting woven from parts of his clothing torn into
strips. When at last the storm ended and he struck his tent he was
famished.

Packing his things on his toboggan he set out for the tilt, but had
gone only a short distance when the improvised snowshoe broke. He made
repeated efforts to mend it, but always it broke after a few steps
forward. He was in a desperate situation.

He had now been nearly three days without eating. He was still several
miles from the tilt where he had a scant supply that had been reserved
for his journey home. To proceed to the tilt was obviously impossible,
and he could only perish by remaining where he was.

Utterly exhausted after a fruitless effort to flounder forward, he sat
down upon his flatsled, and looked out over the silent snow waste.
Weakened with hunger, it seemed to him that he had reached the end of
his endurance. So far as he knew there was not another human being
within a hundred miles of where he sat, and he had no expectation or
slightest hope of any one coming to his assistance. "I was scrammed,"
said he, which meant, in our vernacular, he was "all in."

Gilbert is a fine Christian man, and all the time, as he told me in
relating his experience, he had been praying God to show him a way to
safety. He never was a coward, and he was not afraid to die, for he
had faced death many times before and men of the wilderness become
accustomed to the thought that sometime, out there in the silence and
alone, the hand of the grim messenger may grasp them. But he was
afraid for Mrs. Blake and the four little ones at home. Were he to
perish there would be no one to earn a living for them. He was
frightened to think of the privations those he loved would suffer.

Suddenly, in the distance, he glimpsed two objects moving over the
snow. As they came nearer he discovered that they were men. He shouted
and waved his arms, and there was an answering signal. Presently two
Mountaineer Indians approached, haulin