ellow, that you'll be painfully aware of the
fact to-morrow. However, don't distress yourself; it's a part of the
experience that every one goes through in this country. Besides," said
Harry, smiling, "we can send to the fort for medical advice."

"Don't bother the poor fellow, and hold your tongue, Harry," said the
accountant, who now began to tread more cautiously as he approached the
place where the traps were set.

"How many traps have you?" inquired Harry, in a low tone.

"Three," replied the accountant.

"Do you know I have a very strange feeling about my heels--or rather a
want of feeling," said Hamilton, smiling dubiously.

"A want of feeling! what do you mean?" cried the accountant, stopping
suddenly and confronting his young friend.

"Oh, I daresay it's nothing," he exclaimed, looking as if ashamed of
having spoken of it; "only I feel exactly as if both my heels were cut
off, and I were walking on tiptoe!"

"Say you so? then right about wheel. Your heels are frozen, man, and
you'll lose them if you don't look sharp."

"Frozen!" cried Hamilton, with a look of incredulity.

"Ay, frozen; and it's lucky you told me. I've a place up in the woods
here, which I call my winter camp, where we can get you put to rights.
But step out; the longer we are about it the worse for you."

Harry Somerville was at first disposed to think that the accountant
jested, but seeing that he turned his back towards his traps, and made
for the nearest point of the thick woods with a stride that betokened
thorough sincerity, he became anxious too, and followed as fast as
possible.

The place to which the accountant led his young friends was a group of
fir trees which grew on a little knoll, that rose a few feet above the
surrounding level country. At the foot of this hillock a small rivulet
or burn ran in summer, but the only evidence of its presence now was the
absence of willow bushes all along its covered narrow bed. A level
tract was thus formed by nature, free from all underwood, and running
inland about the distance of a mile, where it was lost in the swamp
whence the stream issued. The wooded knoll or hillock lay at the mouth
of this brook, and being the only elevated spot in the neighbourhood,
besides having the largest trees growing on it, had been selected by the
accountant as a convenient place for "camping out" on, when he visited
his traps in winter, and happened to be either too late or disinclined
to retu