After trying in vain all the resources practiced by trappers in such straits, all of which were well known to François, we ate the grease in our rifle stocks, all the fringes and unnecessary parts of our buck-leather clothes, gun and ammunition bags, and every scrap of eatable material, boiling it down in an Assinaboine basket with hot stones, and were finally reduced to buds and twigs. After many days of this extreme privation, no longer possessing strength to travel or hunt, I became discouraged; and as we lay down one night I determined to abandon the struggle and remain there, enduring with such fortitude as I might the final pangs, which could not be long deferred. At this last stage in the struggle, an event occurred of the most extraordinary character, which cannot seem more strange and incredible to any one than it has always appeared to me on the innumerable occasions when I have since reflected on it. Notwithstanding our exhaustion and desperate conclusion of the night before, François rose at daylight, made up the fire as well as his strength permitted, blazed a tree near by on which he marked with charcoal a large cross, and carefully reloading and standing his gun against that emblem, proceeded to repeat in such feeble whispers as he was yet capable of, all the scraps of French and Latin prayers he could remember, to all of which I was in no condition to give much attention. When he got through he remarked with much cheerfulness that he was now sure of killing something and urged me to make one more effort with him, which I rather angrily refused, and bade him lie down and take what had to come, like a man. With cheerful assurance he replied that he was not afraid to die, but our time had not come. He knew he would find and kill, and we would escape all right. Then desisting from his useless effort to get me up, François, leaving his heavy snow-shoes behind, directed himself with weak and uneven steps down the little stream in the deep gorge of which our camp was made; and never expecting to see him again, my mind relapsed into an idle, vacuous condition, in which external circumstances were forgotten or disregarded. But scarcely a few minutes had elapsed, and as it afterwards appeared he had hardly traversed a couple of hundred yards when I heard his gun, which I knew never cracked in vain.