An hour’s rest, sitting on the toboggan before a cheerful fire in the lee of the river bank, revived them.
“If we only had our snowshoes, and a bit t’ eat!” said Andy, when David suggested that it was time to go. “I’m fair starved!”
“And so be I!” David declared. “’Tis a long time since supper last evenin’. We’ll have th’ partridges, whatever, when we gets t’ th’ Halfway tilt.”
“It seems like I never can stand un so long,” said Andy. “I’m weak for hunger.”
Andy was to learn in the days that followed, what real hunger is, but he was brave enough, and not given to complaint. It is well, sometimes, for all of us to be tried out by the test of experience. Only through experience can we learn the stuff we are made of, and only through deprivations of the comforts to which we are accustomed can we learn to appreciate the good things of life. Most of us are too prone to take things for granted, and to forget that what we have and enjoy are the gifts of a benign Providence.
Many times that day David and Andy declared they “could not walk another step,” but they pushed and floundered bravely on until, in the dusk of evening, they stumbled at last into the friendly shelter of the Halfway tilt.
They were almost too weary to build a fire, but hunger conquered weariness, and presently with a roaring fire in the stove, and one of the partridges boiling—for, famished as they were, David insisted that the other one must be reserved for breakfast—they felt more cheerful. Fortunately they had left some tea in the tilt, and while their supper of half a boiled partridge each and a cup of tea was far from satisfying their healthy young appetites, it refreshed them.
“I’m thinkin’,” remarked David, as they ate, “we’ve got a rare lot t’ be thankful for. Th’ good Lard woke me up just in time last night. If I’d slept a bit longer we’d both been smothered with th’ smoke and burned up.”
“’Twere lucky you wakes,” agreed Andy.
“I’m thinkin’ ’tweren’t luck, now,” protested David. “I’m thinkin’ th’ Lard were watchin’, and wakes us just th’ right time.”