," said Wade.

I thought it as likely to be seven or eight hundred.

"That would be a good way to travel on foot," muttered Raed
reflectively.

"Yes, it would," said Kit. "Still I shouldn't quite despair of doing
it if there was no other way out of this."

"How long would it take us, do you suppose?" Raed asked after another
pause. "How many miles a day could we make, besides hunting and
getting our food?"

"Not more than twelve on an average," Kit thought.

"Suppose it to be seven hundred miles, that would take us near sixty
days," Raed remarked; "seventy, counting out Sundays."

"We never could do that in the world!" Wade exclaimed. "It would take
us till midwinter, in this country! We should starve! We should freeze
to death!"

"Couldn't very well do both," Kit observed rather dryly.

"The journey would be well-nigh impossible, I expect," Raed remarked.
"On getting in from the coast, we should probably meet with no
sea-fowl, no seals: in fact, I hardly know what we should be able to
get for game. I have heard that caribou-deer are common in Labrador;
but they are, as we know from experience in the wilderness about Mount
Katahdin, very difficult to kill. And then our cartridges!"

"We might possibly attach ourselves to some party of Esquimaux going
southward," Kit suggested.

"And be murdered by them for our guns and knives," exclaimed Wade.

"Oh, no! not so bad as that, I should hope. But let's go to sleep now,
and discuss this to-morrow."

There was something horrible to our feelings in this thought of our
perfect isolation from the world. I think Wade realized it, or at
least felt it, more than either of the other boys. Kit either didn't
or wouldn't seem to mind it much after the first hour or two. Raed
probably saw the chances of our getting away more clearly than any of
us; but I doubt if he felt the wretchedness of our situation so keenly
as either Wade or myself. He was always cool and collected in his
plans, and not a little inclined to stoicism as regarded personal
danger. These philosophical persons are apt to be so. What the most of
folks feel badly about they laugh at: it is better so, perhaps. Yet
pity and sympathy are good things in their way. They help hold society
together; and are, I think it likely, about its strongest bonds of
union. As for Weymouth and Donovan, they bore it all very lightly:
indeed, they didn't seem to give the subject any great thought,
farther than to exclaim occ