I had no trouble, the two years I taught at Norway House, to gather scholars. They came from the mainland and from the islands and from the fort, by canoe and dog-train. My scholars were faithful in their attendance, but the responsibility was a heavy one for me, a mere boy. However, I was fresh from being taught and from learning, and I went to work enthusiastically, and was very much encouraged by the appreciation of the people. After school hours I either took my gun and went partridge-hunting, or went and set my net for white-fish, to help make our pot boil. On Saturdays I took one of my boys with me in my canoe, and we would paddle off down the lake or up the river, hunting ducks and other fowl. When winter came--which it does very early out there--I got some traps and set them for foxes. Many a winter morning I rose at four o'clock, harnessed my dogs and drove miles and back in visiting my traps, reaching home and having breakfast before daylight, as it was necessary, for a part of the winter, to begin school as soon as it was good daylight. Soon after we arrived I invested in four pups. I paid the mission interpreter, Mr. Sinclair, £2 sterling for the pups on condition that he fed them until they were one year old. In the meantime, for the first winter, Mr. Sinclair kindly lent me some of his dogs. Everybody had dogs, and my pups promised to make a good train when they grew. All my boy pupils were great "dog-drivers." Many a Saturday morning, bright and early, my boys would rendezvous at the Mission, and we would start with staked wood-sleighs across the lake or up the river to the nearest dry wood bluff. This, in my time, was three or four miles away, and what a string we would make--twenty-five or thirty boys of us, each with three or four dogs, all these hitched tandem; bells ringing, boys shouting, whips cracking, dogs yelping--away we would fly as fast as we could drive. What cared we for cold or storm! When we reached the wood we would race as to who could chop and split and load first. What shouting and laughter and fun! and, when all were loaded, back across the ice as fast as we could go, all running. Then we would pile our wood at the schoolhouse or church, and, again agreeing to meet at the mission house in the afternoon, away home to their dinner my boys would drive, and by and by turn up, this time with flat sleds or toboggans; and now we would race across to the Hudson's Bay Company's fort, every man for himself, and when we got there we would challenge the Company's employees to a game of foot-ball, for this was the national game of the North-West, and my boys were hard to beat. Then back home by moon or Northern Light, making this ice-bound land like day. Ah! those were great times for the cultivation of wind and muscle and speed--and better, sympathy and trust.