rous pyramid, big enough to cook twenty seals,
and round the community bonfire they collected, dogs and all, for a
feast. The children shouted in glee and clapped their hands. The
mothers were happier for themselves than for their babies. And their
joy was the greater because word had come that Dr. Grenfell was
finding his way in the little steamer, the _Julia Sheridan_, through a
channel behind the islands and was likely to be in their midst at any
hour of any day.

Next day, the Doctor came. Such hand-shaking and back-slapping and
outcries of honest pleasure as greeted him! And from the very first
minute there were anxious appeals for his aid.

"Doctor, would ye please come to see my old woman?"

"What's the matter with her?"

"Oh, Doctor, she does be took wonderful bad. Sometimes the wind rises
an' it goes all up an' down an' it settles in her teeth an' the pains
shoots her in the stummick an' we has to take hold of her arms an'
pull 'em out and she howls like a dog an' we dunno what's the matter.
Would you please come an' see? She's askin' us to kill her she's in
such punishment, but us didn't think us'd ought to do it without
askin' you. Would you please come 'n' see?"

In that first winter Grenfell was "at home" three Sundays only, and he
had to cover fifteen hundred miles behind the dogs. Sometimes they
were heart-breaking, bone-racking miles. Sometimes they were as smooth
and easy as a skating-rink. But not very often.

One day he had a run of seventy miles to make across the frozen
country.

The path was not broken out--it wasn't even cut and blazed.

Just once had the leading dog made the journey.

But because he had made it once--they left it all to him to choose the
way to go.

Straight on the good dog went, never stopping to turn round and look
in the face of the driver, the way dogs will.

The way--such as it was--took them over wide lakes, and through thick
woods deep-hung with snow.

"Halt!" called Grenfell. The driver gave the command to the dogs. They
stopped and rested while the men explored.

Sure enough, the leading dog was right. A climb to the top of a high
tree showed the "leads" and proved to the men that they were traveling
in the right direction: and the compass said so too.

Again and again they stopped--and every time it proved that the dog
was right.

On journey after journey of this kind, round about St. Anthony on that
far northern peninsula of Newfoundland, Grenfell a