“Ay—snow! it’s come at last, and I am glad of it, for we have far more than enough o’ grub now, and it’s time we were off from this. You see, lass, we can’t expect to find much game on a journey in winter, so we must carry all we can with us. Our backs won’t take so much as the sled, but the sled can’t go loaded till there’s snow on the ground, so the moment there is enough of it we’ll set off. Before starting, hows’ever, I must go off and try for a deer, for men can’t walk well on fish alone; and when I’m away you can be getting the snow-shoes repaired, and the sled-lashings overhauled. We will set about all that to-morrow.”
“But isn’t to-morrow Sabbath?” said Nelly.
“So ’tis! I forgot; well, we can put it off till Monday.”
It may be well here to remark that Mrs Gore, being a sincere Christian, had a great reverence for the Sabbath-day, and had imbued her children with some of her own spirit in regard to it.
During the troubles and anxieties of the period when the children were lost in the snow and captured by the Indians, they had lost count of the days of the week. Roy was not much troubled about this, but his sister’s tender conscience caused her much uneasiness; and when they afterwards ran away from the Indians, and could do as they pleased, they agreed together to fix a Sabbath-day for themselves, beginning with the particular day on which it first occurred to them that they had not kept a Sabbath “for a long, long time.”
“We can’t find out the right day now, you know,” observed Nelly, in an apologetic tone.
“Of course not,” said Roy; “besides, it don’t matter, because you remember how it is in the Ten Commandments: ‘Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath.’ We will keep to-day, then; work six days, and then keep the seventh day.”
We have elsewhere observed that Roy was a bit of a philosopher. Having reasoned the matter out thus philosophically, the children held to their resolve; they travelled six days, and observed every seventh day as the Sabbath.
The particular Sabbath-day about which we are writing turned out to be a memorable one, as we shall see.
Roy and Nelly lay down that night, side by side, as was their wont, with their separate blankets wrapped around them, and their feet pointing towards the fire. Of course they never undressed at night on this journey, but washed their underclothing as they found time and opportunity.