The only thing discernible for the moment, of our fellow-companion, was his snow-shoes, which were moving convulsively to and fro, near the surface. Encumbered by them, he would never have risen again but for our aid; and it was some time ere he succeeded in getting his mouth, ears, and nose, emptied of the snow; he was more cautious afterwards in the management of his feet, although his inexperience somewhat retarded our progress. We were soon in the very depths of the forest, and lonely indeed are these Canadian woods in the dreary winter time. All under foot was enveloped in snow, from which as from a white sea, rose like so many colossal columns, the stately trunks of the trees, through the leafless boughs of which, as through an extended trellis-work, the blue sky was discernible over head. The undulations of the surface pleasantly diversified a scene which would otherwise have been monotonous; and we made our way merrily over hill and valley, but ever through the unbroken forest, in the deep dells of which we now and then crossed a streamlet, whose course had been arrested, and whose voice had been hushed for months by the relentless frost. We had been thus occupied for about three hours, when we at length came upon the track of the game:—a deep furrow had been made in the snow; bespeaking the labour which the animal must have had in ploughing his way through it. We stopped; and McQuaigh, giving vent to a long expiration, half between a whistle and a sigh, exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his horny features, “We have him as sure as a gun, if nobody else has got scent of him; and you see,” he added, pointing to the untrodden snow around, “there’s not the track of a living soul after him.” “But what chance have we?” I asked, “seeing that it must be more than two days at least since the Moose passed this spot?” “Give a deer any reasonable start in the winter time,” replied McQuaigh, “and a man on his snow-shoes will run him down. We have only to follow his track, and depend on’t we’ll go over more ground than he will in a day.” So saying, he led off in the direction which our prey had evidently taken. Blungle did not like the possibility of being for a week on the track of one deer; but he put the best face on it, and laboured to keep up with us. We had not gone far, ere, like the confluence of a small with a larger stream, we found the track of an ordinary deer converge upon that of the Moose. From the point of junction, the follower, as affording him an easier passage through the snow, had kept to the track of his more powerful leader. “Let’s hurry, and we’ll have the two of them,” said McQuaigh, and he doubled the length of his strides. Blungle groaned, but laboured on.