Their thoughts were full of the hopes and aspirations of the first evening when they came to the Namaycush Lake tilt. How dear to us are old aspirations and old hopes, dead, perhaps, with the dead weeks or years that have gone, but still living in our memory like the features of departed friends. Our aspirations may never be attained, our fondest hopes never be fulfilled, but once they encouraged and buoyed us, and made life appear a glorious field of attainment, as indeed it is. If life were never flavored by day dreams, how dull and dreary it would sometimes be.
Great deeds are born in imagination. Imagination prompts us to attainment. It lifts us to higher levels. In the proportion in which we possess it, imagination urges us to apply our ambitions and our efforts to gain the things we dream of. Because of it we climb higher and travel farther, and become so much bigger and nobler men than ever we could have been had we never dreamed.
But, O, the bitter disappointment of shattered hopes! ’Tis a brave man that rises above failure, and tries again. This is the test of a man’s mettle. This is God’s way, I sometimes think, of sifting the grain from the chaff. The men who are worth while never give up. They stick and stick, and try again and again, until they win out in the end. The others surrender hope at the first reverse, and like chaff are blown away by the wind of oblivion.
David and Andy were silent for a long while. They were living over those early days of the winter when they came upon the trail dreaming of success and determined to attain it. Now the winter was past and the hunting was at an end. Was all their effort lost? Was Jamie, after all, to go blind because one day they neglected the simple precaution of wearing their snow glasses?
“We were expectin’ to do so much when we came in th’ fall,” remarked Andy, sorrowfully, when they had finally filled the stove with wood, and settled in their sleeping bags. “We made a grand hunt, even if Indian Jake stole th’ fur. But if he stole un ’twon’t do Jamie any good and it’s too late now t’ catch any more.”
“I were thinkin’, Andy,” said David, clinging to a forlorn hope, “that maybe Doctor Joe were makin’ a mistake about Jamie’s eyes. Maybe Jamie won’t go blind so soon, and next year’ll be in time for he t’ go t’ th’ great doctor—if Indian Jake stole th’ fur.”
“Do you think so, now, Davy?” Andy asked expectantly.
“I’m just sayin’ maybe,” said David, cautiously. “If ’tis so, when Pop’ll come next year t’ hunt th’ Seal Lake trail maybe he’ll let me hunt this trail, and we’ll be sure then t’ get fur enough t’ pay for th’ cure.”
“I’d have t’ stay home with Margaret, and I’d like t’ be here and help hunt th’ trail—and—get th’ fur t’ cure Jamie,” said Andy regretfully.
“You’ll be helpin’, Andy, by stayin’ home th’ way Pop had t’ do this year,” comforted David.