Whether it was that the prospect of getting about, or the diversion of the dog was responsible for the change, Dick's cheerfulness markedly increased in the next few days. For hours he would fool with the animal, whom he had named Billy, after a hunting companion, teaching him to shake hands, to speak, to wrinkle his nose in a doggy grin, to lie down at command, and all the other tricks useful and ornamental that go to make up the fanciest kind of a dog education. The mistakes and successes of his new friend seemed to amuse him hugely. Often from the tent burst the sounds of inextinguishable mirth. May-may-gwán, peeping, saw the young man as she had first seen him, clear-eyed, laughing, the wrinkles of humour deepening about his eyes, his white teeth flashing, his brow untroubled. Three days she hovered thus on the outer edge of the renewed good feeling, then timidly essayed an advance.

Unobtrusive, she slipped inside the teepee's flap. The dog sat on his haunches, his head to one side in expectation.

"The dog is a good dog," she said, her breath choking her.

Apparently the young man had not heard.

"It will be well to name the dog that he may answer to his name," she ventured again.

Dick, abruptly gripped by the incomprehensible obsession, uneasy as at something of which he only waited the passing, resentful because of the discomfort this caused him, unable to break through the artificial restraint that enveloped his spirit, lifted his eyes suddenly, dead and lifeless, to hers.

"It is time to lift the net," he said.

The girl made no more advances. She moved almost automatically about her accustomed tasks, preparing the materials for what remained to be done.

Promptly on the seventh day, with much preparation and precaution, Dick moved. He had now to suffer the girl's assistance. When he first stood upright, he was at once attacked by a severe dizziness, which would have caused a fall had not May-may-gwán steadied him. With difficulty he hobbled to a seat outside. Even his arms seemed to him pithless. He sank to his place hard-breathed, exhausted. It was some minutes before he could look about him calmly.

The first object to catch his eye was the cardinal red of a moose-maple, like a spot of blood on velvet-green. And thus he knew that September, or the Many-caribou-in-the-woods Moon, was close at hand.

"Hi!" he called.

May-may-gwán came as before, but without the look of expectation in her eyes.

"Bring me wood of mashkigiwáteg, wood of tamarack," he commanded; "bring me mókamon, the knife, and tschì-mókamon, the large knife; bring the hide of ah-ték, the caribou."

"These things are ready, at hand," she replied.

With the _couteau croche_, the crooked knife of the North, Dick laboured slowly, fashioning with care the long tamarack strips. He was exceedingly particular as to the selection of the wood, as to the taper of the pieces. At last one was finished to his satisfaction. Slowly then he fashioned it, moulding the green wood, steaming it to make it more plastic, until at last the ends lay side by side, and the loop of wood bowed above in the shape of a snow-shoe raquette. The exact shape Dick still further assured by means of two cross-pieces. These were bound in place by the strips of the caribou-skin rawhide wet in warm water, which was also used to bind together the two ends. The whole was then laid aside to dry.

Thus in the next few days Dick fashioned the frame of six snow-shoes. He adhered closely to the Ojibway pattern. In these woods it was not necessary to have recourse to the round, broad shape of the rough bowlder-hills, nor was it possible to use the long, swift shoe of the open plains. After a while he heated red the steel end of his rifle cleaning-rod and bored holes for the webbing. This also he made of caribou rawhide, for caribou shrinks when wet, thus tightening the lacing where other materials would stretch. Above and below the cross-pieces he put in a very fine weaving; between them a coarser, that the loose snow might readily sift through. Each strand he tested again and again; each knot he made doubly sure.

Nor must it be imagined that he did these things alone. May-may-gwán helped him, not only by fetching for him the tools and materials, of which he stood in need, but also in the bending, binding, and webbing itself. Under the soft light of the trees, bathed in the aroma of fresh shavings and the hundred natural odours of the forest, it was exceedingly pleasant accurately to accomplish the light skilled labour. But between these human beings, alone in a vast wilderness, was no communication outside the necessities of the moment. Thus in a little the three pairs of snow-shoes, complete even to the buckskin foot-loops, hung from the sheltered branch of a spruce.

"Bring now to me," said the young man, "poles of the hickory, logs of gijik, the cedar; bring............