Four men stood upon a rude raft, and with roughly-made oars and long fir poles were trying to guide it out of the current of the swollen Clearwater River into a small sheltered inlet. Both shores of the river rose abruptly to steep and terrible mountains. Not far above was the snow-line. The men’s faces were white and haggard, their eyes anxious, half desperate. Huddled upon a stretcher at one end of the raft was a young man, little more than a boy, whose pallid, emaciated face was turned slightly to one side. His eyes were closed; the long black lashes lay like heavy shadows upon his cheeks. The weak November sunshine, struggling over the fierce mountains, shone through his thin nostrils, turning them pink, and giving an unearthly look to the face. A collie crouched close beside him, shivering with fear, yet ever and anon licking the cold hand lying outside the gray blanket; occasionally he lifted his head and uttered a long, mournful howl. Each time the four men shuddered and exchanged looks of despair,—so humanly appealing was it, and so deeply did it voice the terrible dread in their own hearts. It was now two months since they had left Seattle on a hunting expedition in the Bitter Root Mountains in Idaho. For six weeks they had been lost in those awful snow fastnesses. Their hunting dogs had been killed by wild beasts. Their twelve pack-ponies had been left to starve to death when, finding further progress on land impossible on account of the snow, they constructed a raft and started on their perilous journey down the Clearwater. The cook had been sick almost the entire time, and their progress had been necessarily slow and discouraging. They had now reached a point where the river was so full of boulders and so swift that they could proceed no farther on the raft. For several days the cook had been unconscious, lying in a speechless stupor; but when they had, with much danger and excitement, landed and made him comfortable in a protected nook, he suddenly spoke,—faintly but distinctly. “Polly,” he said, with deep tenderness, “lay your hand on my head. I guess it won’t ache so, then.” The four men, looking at him, grew whiter. They could not look at each other. The dog, having already taken his place beside him, lifted his head and looked at him with pitiable eagerness. “Oh, Polly!”—there was a heart-break in the voice,—“you don’t know what I’ve suffered! The cold, and then the fever! The pain has been awful. Oh, I’ve wanted you so, Polly—I’ve wanted you so!... But it’s all right, now that I’m home again.... Where’s the baby, Polly? Oh, the nights that I’ve laid, freezing and suffering in the snow, just kept alive by the thought o’ you an’ the little man! I knew it ’u’d kill you ’f I died—so I _w’u’dn’t_ give up! An’ now I’m here ’t home again. Polly——” “We must fix some supper, boys,” said Darnell, roughly, turning away to hide his emotion. “Let’s get the fire started.”