twinkled them a warm
yellow welcome like friendly eyes.

The only thing to do was to fight their way up and over the rocks. As
they came to the top, they found two tired men who knew the way, but
were so weary they had made up their minds to flop down in the snow
for the night.

But Grenfell started a fire, and served out some bits of sweet cake he
carried: so that presently they took heart to go on. If they had not
done so, they might all have frozen to death in the snow, for the
night was bitterly cold and they were perspiring from their hard work,
so that their clothes were turning as stiff as suits of armor with the
ice. As it was, the whole party reached the village safely, and came
back next day to find the dogs and the sleds and bring them in.

A lumber mill was started on a bay sixty miles below St. Anthony, and
a boiler weighing three tons was landed and set in place with the
whole neighborhood helping. After Christmas Grenfell decided to make
the run thither with the dogs from St. Anthony.

There was no trail. Most of the way the journey was through virgin
forest. There were windfalls and stumps and bushes with pointed rocks
amid the snow--offering no end of pitfalls where a man might break
his ankle and lie groaning and helpless as a wounded caribou till he
died.

Nobody they could find had ever made the trip. But they had to know
without delay how the boiler worked and how the mill was going. So off
they started, gay as a circus parade, telling themselves they would do
the distance in two days.

Not so. At the end of two days they were still wrangling with mean
little scrub bushes, fallen rotten logs and the pointed rocks
treacherously sheeted with ice and snow.

If they struggled to the top of a snow-laden spruce for an outlook,
all they saw was more of the same old thing--a scowling landscape of
white-clad woods and lonesome ponds. The compass always seemed to lead
them straight into the thick of the worst places.

They took the wrong turning to get round a big hill, and found a river
which they thought would lead them to the head of the bay where the
mill stood.

But the river was a raging torrent, which leapt among the rocks, made
rapids and falls, and left gaping holes in the ice into which the
dogs fell, snarling their traces and their tempers and many times
risking a broken leg.

Still the brave little beasts of burden strained and tugged forward,
encouraged by the shouts of the men.