"Your loving father, "G. McDOUGALL." If I had been alone I could have cried heartily in my great disappointment. Oh! what a fit of lonesomeness and homesickness came upon me, but there was no time for long lamentation. We found that Mr. Woolsey and William had gone on towards Smoking Lake, and we followed and came up with them late at night, and I began my service with Mr. Woolsey; but it took days of constant change to lift from my mind the shadow of my disappointment in missing father. CHAPTER XXXVIII. William goes to the plains--I begin work at Victoria--Make hay--Plough--Hunt--Storm. Father had suggested two plans for immediate action: One was to send William out to the plains to trade some provisions; the other was to send me to the site of the new mission, and have me make some hay and plough some land ready for next spring, and thus take up the ground. Mr. Woolsey decided to act on both. The former was very necessary, for we were living on duck, rabbits, etc., and the supply was precarious. William took an Indian as his companion, and I a white man, by the name of Gladstone, as mine. We travelled together as far as the river. This time we took a skiff Mr. Woolsey had on Smoking Lake. We took this as far as we could by water and then loaded it on to a cart, and when we reached the river we took William's carts apart and crossed them over, and he and his companion started out to look for provisions, while Gladstone and myself to put up hay and plough land. For the former we had two scythes, and for the latter a coulterless plough; but we had a tremendously big yoke of oxen. We pitched our lodge down on the bank of the river and went to work; but as we had to hunt our food as well as work, we did not rush things as I wanted to. My companion had been a long time in the Hudson's Bay Company's service, but was a boat-builder by trade, and knew little about either haymaking or ploughing or hunting; but he was a first-rate fellow, willing always to do his best. He told me that though he had been in the country for a long time, he had seldom fired a gun and had never set a net. We had between us a single-barrelled shotgun, percussion-lock, and a double-barrelled flint lock. The first thing we did was to make some floats and put strings on some stones, and I tied up a net we had and we crossed the river, and set it in an eddy; then we fixed up our scythes and started in to cut hay on the ground where we intended to plough. We had several horses with us, and these and the oxen gave us a lot of trouble. Many an hour we lost in hunting them, but we kept at it. At first our food supply was good. I caught several fine trout in my net, and shot some ducks and chickens. We succeeded in making two good-sized stacks of hay.