is exact distance--whether he was a day or several
days' journey off--but from the tracks of Robin's snow-shoes, which he
crossed more than once, he guessed that he was nearing the Fort, and
pushed on with renewed hope and energy.

Robin, however, was an active hunter. He often made long and rapid
marches from his lonely dwelling--sometimes staying away a week or two
at a time even in winter; so that Wapaw thought himself nearer Fort
Enterprise than he really was, when he first discovered the bold
hunter's tracks. When, at length, he did arrive at less than a day's
journey from the Fort, he was not aware of its close proximity, and,
having tasted nothing whatever for two days, he felt the approach of
that terrible state of exhaustion which precedes death.

It was a somewhat stormy day when the poor Indian's strength finally
broke down. Hitherto he had pushed forward with some degree of hope,
but on the morning of this day a broken branch caught his snow-shoe and
tripped him. At any other time the fall would have been a trifle, but
in his weak condition it acted like the last straw which breaks the
camel's back. Wapaw rose with difficulty, and brushing the snow from
his eyes, looked earnestly at his snow-shoes, well knowing that if they
had been broken in the fall his power of advancing would have been taken
away and his fate sealed, for he had neither strength nor energy left to
repair them. They were uninjured, however; so he once more attempted to
stagger on.

A slight rising ground lay before him. To ascend this was a labour so
great that he almost sank in the midst of it. He reached the top,
however, and gazed eagerly before him. He had gazed thus at the top of
every rising ground that he had reached during the last two days, in the
hope of seeing some sign of the Fort.

A deep sigh escaped him as he rested his hands on the muzzle of his gun,
and his grave countenance was overspread with a look of profound
melancholy. For the first time in his life, the once stout and active
Wapaw had reached the point of giving way to despair. A wide open plain
stretched out before him. The cold wind was howling wildly across it,
driving the keen snow-drift before it in whirling clouds. Even a strong
man might have shrunk from exposing himself on such a plain and to such
a blast on that bitter arctic day. Wapaw felt that, in his case, to
cross it would be certain death; so, with the calm philosophy of a Red
Indian