Now in folding the
letter his eye caught it and he read it--a brief line added by Bessie,
telling him not to think too much about his loss, for she was sure it
would all be well in the end, and not to forget it was the Lord's will
or it could not have happened, adding, "Remember, Bob, the Lord is
always near you."

Nevertheless, Bob was very quiet at supper. He could not forget his
tumbled air castles. He could not forget the fact that the returns
from the present year's trapping would be insufficient to buy the next
year's outfit.

"They was a band o' Injuns comes t' th' post just before I leaves,
pretty nigh on their last legs," remarked Ed, when they had finished
eating and he had lighted his pipe. "They was about as nigh starved as
any passel o' men I ever seen, an' if they'd been starved much more
they'd been dead. I hears some o' th' band did die before these gets
out."

"Who were they?" asked Bob.

"Mountaineers," answered Ed. "They was back in th' country huntin',
but don't find th' deer. They's camped down t' th' post now."

"Did you hear where 'bouts they was huntin'?" inquired Dick. "In th'
nu'th'ard or s'uth'ard?"

"They all comes from th' nu'th'ard and west'ard o' th' post," said Ed.
"They tells me they finds it th' worst year for fur an' game up that
way they ever seen, an' I tells un 'tis th' same here."

"I wonders, now, how Shad an' th' Injuns he's with is makin' out.
They'll be wonderful bad off, an' they don't run on th' deer,"
suggested Dick.

"They'll be likely t' find un up where they finds un when I was with
un," reassured Bob, "but 'tis a long cruise there an' back."

Bob's loss was a keen disappointment to him. For several days it
robbed him of ambition, and he tramped along the trails and attended
to his traps dully and methodically, with a heavy heart. Then he began
to say to himself:

"'Tis th' Lard's way. 'Tweren't right for me to go tradin' or t' have
th' money, an' th' Lord knowin' it takes th' money away."

This thought, with his natural buoyancy of temperament, restored again
to a large extent his interest and ambition in his work; and when he
remembered that he was, after all, the owner of two unencumbered
trails, with all their traps, he almost forgot his disappointment--but
not altogether; that was impossible.

With the end of February ptarmigans began to reappear among the
willows along the river bank. They were welcomed by the trappers, for
they supplied a much nee