d into the canoe and they were off. The day had
begun.

The river narrowed somewhat and the shores grew more rocky. At noon they
lunched on another sand-spit. At sunset they saw a caribou. Night came.
"Always the marionettes." Thus passed nine days--like a dream to Bennie;
and then came the first adventure.

It was about four o'clock on the afternoon of the tenth day of their
trip up the Moisie when Marc suddenly stopped paddling and gazed
intently shoreward. After a moment he said something in a low tone to
Edouard, and they turned the canoe and drove it rapidly toward a small
cove half hidden by rocks. Bennie, straining his eyes, could see nothing
at first, but when the canoe was but ten yards from shore he caught
sight of the motionless figure of a man, lying on his face with his head
nearly in the water. Marc turned him over gently, but the limbs fell
limp, one leg at a grotesque angle to the knee. Bennie saw instantly
that it was broken. The Indian's face was white and drawn, no doubt with
pain.

"_Il est mort!_" said Marc slowly, crossing himself.

Edouard shrugged his shoulders and fetched a small flask of brandy from
the professor's sack. Forcing open the jaws, he poured a few drops into
the man's mouth. The Indian choked and opened his eyes. Edouard grunted.

"_La jeunesse pense qu'elle sait tout!_" he remarked scornfully.

Thus they found Nichicun, without whom Bennie might never have
accomplished the object of his quest. It took three days to nurse the
half-dead and altogether starved Montagnais back to life, but he
received the tenderest care. Marc shot a young caribou and gave him the
blood to drink, and made a ragout to put the flesh back on his bones.
Meanwhile the professor slept long hours on the moss and took a
much-needed rest; and by degrees they learned from Nichicun the story of
his misfortune--the story that forms a part of the chronicle of the
expedition, which can be read at the Smithsonian Institution.

He was a Montagnais, he said, with a line of traps to the northeast of
the Height of Land, and last winter he had had very bad luck indeed.
There had been less and less in his traps and he had seen no caribou. So
he had taken his wife, who was sick, and had gone over into the Nascopee
country for food, and there his wife had died. He had made up his mind
very late in the season to come down to Moisie and make his mass and get
a new wife, and start a fresh line of traps in the autumn. All