"Hollo! don't you hear a cry, Harry?"

At this moment there was another lull; the drift fell, and for an
instant cleared away, revealing the bewildered Hamilton, not twenty
yards off, standing like a pillar of snow, in mute despair.

Profiting by the glimpse, Harry rushed forward, caught him by the arm,
and led him into the partial shelter of the forest.

Nothing further befell them after this. Their route lay in shelter all
the way to the fort. Poor Hamilton, it is true, took one or two of his
occasional plunges by the way, but without any serious result--not even
to the extent of stuffing his nose, ears, neck, mittens, pockets,
gun-barrels, and everything else with snow, because, these being quite
full and hard packed already, there was no room left for the addition of
another particle.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THE WINTER PACKET--HARRY HEARS FROM OLD FRIENDS, AND WISHES THAT HE WAS
WITH THEM.

Letters from home! What a burst of sudden emotion--what a riot of
conflicting feelings, of dread and joy,--expectation and anxiety--what a
flood of old memories--what stirring up of almost forgotten associations
these three words create in the hearts of those who dwell in distant
regions of this earth, far, far away from kith and kin, from friends and
acquaintances, from the much-loved scenes of childhood, and from _home_!
Letters from home! How gratefully the sound falls upon ears that have
been long unaccustomed to sounds and things connected with home, and so
long accustomed to wild, savage sounds, that these have at length lost
their novelty, and become everyday and commonplace, while the first have
gradually grown strange and unwonted. For many long months home and all
connected with it have become a dream of other days, and savage-land a
present reality. The mind has by degrees become absorbed by surrounding
objects--objects so utterly unassociated with or unsuggestive of any
other land, that it involuntarily ceases to think of the scenes of
childhood with the same feelings that it once did. As time rolls on,
home assumes a misty, undefined character, as if it were not only
distant in reality, but were also slowly retreating farther and farther
away--growing gradually faint and dream-like, though not less dear, to
the mental view.

"Letters from home!" shouted Mr Wilson, and the doctor, and the
skipper, simultaneously, as the sportsmen, after dashing through the
wild storm, at last reached the fort, and st