's heart as he gazed upwards;
and as he thought upon the Creator of these mysterious worlds--and
remembered that He came to this little planet of ours to work out the
miracle of our redemption, the words that he had often read in the
Bible: "Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him?" came forcibly
to his remembrance, and he felt the appropriateness of that sentiment
which the sweet singer of Israel has expressed in the words: "Praise ye
him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of light."

There was a deep, solemn stillness all around--a stillness widely
different from that peaceful composure which characterises a calm day in
an inhabited land. It was the death-like stillness of that most
peculiar and dreary desolation which results from the total absence of
animal existence. The silence was so oppressive that it was with a
feeling of relief he listened to the low, distant voices of the men as
they paused ever and anon in their busy task to note and remark on the
progress of their work. In the intense cold of an Arctic night the
sound of voices can be heard at a much greater distance than usual, and
although the men were far off, and hummocks of ice intervened between
them and Fred, their tones broke distinctly, though gently, on his ear.
Yet these sounds did not interrupt the unusual stillness. They served
rather to impress him more forcibly with the vastness of that tremendous
solitude in the midst of which he stood.

Gradually his thoughts turned homeward, and he thought of the dear ones
who circled round his own fireside, and, perchance, talked of him; of
the various companions he had left behind, and the scenes of life and
beauty where he used to wander; but such memories led him irresistibly
to the far north again, for in all home-scenes the figure of his father
started up, and he was back again in an instant, searching toilsomely
among the floes and icebergs of the Polar Seas. It _was_ the invariable
ending of poor Fred's meditations, and, however successful he might be
in entering, for a time, into the spirit of fun that characterised most
of the doings of his shipmates, and in following the bent of his own
joyous nature, in the hours of solitude, and in the dark night, when no
one saw him, his mind ever reverted to the one engrossing subject, like
the oscillating needle to the pole.

As he continued to gaze up, long and earnestly, into the starry sky, his
thoughts began to wander over the past an