After partaking of this food and drink the boot was cut off, the poor swollen foot bathed and bound up and then they carried him on an improvised stretcher very carefully and tenderly out to the canoe. Excepting two short portages it was all water way to the post at which place they arrived just at dusk. Souder, our cook, when he saw them helping Ralson out of the canoe said, "Mein Gott! Vich end of Ralson is sick dis time? Can't you tole me, eh?" and it was pretty hard to tell from his limp appearance.
After he had recovered sufficiently to be questioned as to how he got into the trap he said he had reached into the back of the house to affix the bait and forgot the trap and stepped into it. The meat that he had cut up was, of course, spoiled, but the skin after being washed and scraped, proved to have sustained no damage.
Ralson had no further mishaps in this country for when his foot was healed he took his discharge and returned to a well-off mother in London who could afford to have a keeper to care for him if so inclined. This happened years ago and as I never heard from him he may have joined the English Yeomanry and gone to South Africa and been killed on the firing line. If so, his mishaps are finished and so is my story.