aused and, with his eyes upon the Englishman who was
dismounting, continued:

"Poor Clen! He did his best, and I do not hold his failure against
him, for his was a journey of hardship and peril such as few men could
have survived. Upon receiving the packet he started within the hour.
That night he camped at the line, and that night, too, came the first
snow of the season. He labored on next day to the railway and took a
train to Edmonton, and from there, to Fort George, where he succeeded
in procuring an Indian guide for the dash into the wilderness beyond
the railway. The early months of last winter were among the most
terrible in the history of the North. Storm after storm hurtled out of
the Arctic, and between storms the bitter winds from the barrens to
the eastward roared with unabated fury. Yet Clen and his guide pushed
on, fighting the cold and the snow. Up over the Height of Land, to the
Hudson Bay Post at the head of the Parsnip, where I was making my
headquarters, and where I had lain snowbound for ten days. It was
during the descent of Crooked River, a quick water, treacherous
stream, whose thin ice was covered with snow, that the accident
happened that cost me the loss of the location, and nearly cost Clen
his life. The Indian guide was mushing before, bent low with the
weight of his pack, and head lowered to the sweep of the wind. Clen
followed. At the head of a newly frozen rapid, the Englishman suddenly
broke through and was plunged into the icy waters. Grasping the ice,
he managed to draw himself up so that his elbows rested upon the edge,
and in this position he called again and again to the guide. But the
Indian was far ahead, his ears were muffled in his fur cap, and the
wind roared through the scrub, drowning Clen's voice. The icy waters
numbed him and sucked at his body seeking to drag him to his doom. The
heavy pack was dragging him slowly backward, and his hold upon the ice
was slipping. Then, and not until then, Clen did what any other man
who possessed the strength, would have done. He worked the knife from
his belt and cut the straps of his pack sack. In an instant it
disappeared beneath the ice, and with it the location of your
father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a
fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won
had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the
nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of _babiche_, succe