“Strange!” cried Harry, as he placed the kettle on the fire—“strange to be hungry after a five miles’ walk and a night in the snow? I would rather say it was strange if you were not hungry. Throw on that billet, like a good fellow, and spit those grouse, while I cut some pemmican and prepare the tea.”
“How are the heels now, Hamilton?” asked the accountant, who divided his attention between his pipe and his snowshoes, the lines of which required to be re-adjusted.
“They appear to be as well as if nothing had happened to them,” replied Hamilton. “I’ve been looking at them, and there is no mark whatever. They do not even feel tender.”
“Lucky for you, old boy, that they were taken in time, else you’d have had another story to tell.”
“Do you mean to say that people’s heels really freeze and fall off?” inquired the other, with a look of incredulity.
“Soft, very soft, and green,” murmured Harry, in a low voice, while he continued his work of adding fresh snow to the kettle as the process of melting reduced its bulk.
“I mean to say,” replied the accountant, tapping the ashes out of his pipe, “that not only heels, but hands, feet, noses, and ears frequently freeze, and often fall off in this country, as you will find by sad experience if you don’t look after yourself a little better than you have done hitherto.”
One of the evil effects of the perpetual jesting that prevailed at York Fort was, that “soft” (in other words, straightforward, unsuspecting) youths had to undergo a long process of learning-by-experience: first, believing everything, and then doubting everything, ere they arrived at that degree of sophistication which enabled them to distinguish between truth and falsehood.
Having reached the doubting period in his training, Hamilton looked down and said nothing, at least with his mouth, though his eyes evidently remarked, “I don’t believe you.” In future years, however, the evidence of these same eyes convinced him that what the accountant said upon this occasion was but too true.
Breakfast was a repetition of the supper of the previous evening. During its discussion they planned proceedings for the day.