were fast becoming chilled and
numb.

All the desolation, helplessness and misery of the situation were forced
upon him by that keen and merciless power of reflection which so often
attacks the mind in moments of extreme peril or of sudden disaster.

He saw but too plainly that it was useless to look for rescue before
morning, and, clinging there to his bleak and uncertain perch, he felt
that he would assuredly chill to death in a few hours.

Looking out into the gloom of the coming dusk, with the long, black,
freezing night staring him in the face, tears gathered in the poor
fellow's eyes, and a lump of choking misery rose up in his throat. Yet
he was a brave fellow, who had never been known to yield an inch before
any danger which must be met, when the balance of probabilities was
adjusted with any degree of fairness. In this case, the probabilities
were all on one side, and that side was against him.

"There just aint any chance for me at all," he groaned, at length. "I'm
in a much worse predicament than the beaver and muskrats; for if they do
get killed, it's so sudden they don't know it, but I've got to die by
inches. I've just got to sit here and freeze a little at a time, till I
fall off and finish life by drowning."

A wretched enough prospect! Yet that was the fate which seemed certainly
awaiting him. Wet as he was, and already shivering, with no chance for
exercise, there seemed little chance of surviving the cold, dismal
night.

Sitting in hopeless suffering, he peered about him again and again in
the gathering darkness, in the vain hope of discovering something that
could give him an atom of comfort. Then, whipping his numbed hands about
his shoulders until they tingled, he attemped to remove his soaked and
stiffening boots; but, owing to his shaky and uncertain seat, he was
baffled in this effort also.

Then, with feet and legs growing every moment more numb, he sat,
clinging with one hand to the stump, whipping the other, shouting at
intervals, and waiting for--he dared not think what.

An hour passed; then another; dumb, dreary despair had settled upon his
mind. Insensibly he fell into a half-frozen stupor. He was beginning to
think, in a numb way, that it did not make any particular difference to
him what happened now.

An hour or more dragged by thus sluggishly, then a sudden shock,
accompanied by a grinding noise, threw him partly off the stump.
Instinctively he clutched the sprouts with his