After an absence of five months the longed for pastor returned. The committee had not succeeded in finding one to replace him, and, indeed, do not seem to have striven hard to do so. In a spirit of submission he turned northwestward, though immediately on his arrival he wrote to his aged father: "Whether the Canadian Church will allow me to stay here or not I do not yet know. I am perfectly willing to return if they get some one to supply the place. For some reasons I would wish it to be so. We shall see." His return to Red River on this occasion was one that even he confessed to be "tedious and toilsome." He actually took forty-nine days to reach his destination, starting from Galena, on the Mississippi river. On his northward journey he reached the establishment of the Presbyterian missionaries at Red Lake, in Minnesota. Supplied by these kind friends with pemican, bread, and flour, Mr. Black and his voyageur, about the end of October, pushed through Red Lake in their birch bark canoe, the missionary having to paddle as well as the boatman. On the third day, on account of the ice, the canoe could proceed no further. Unwillingly the travellers retraced their course and reached again the shelter of their missionary friends. In the following week the start was again made, but again to be interrupted by ice. The party then camped on the shore for several days, until the ice would bear their weight, when they proceeded on their slippery way. They walked over the ice for forty miles, until having obtained a horse and cart they reached by land carriage, in four and a half days, Pembina, a fort on the boundary line. At the Pembina trading post a good Presbyterian fur trader named Murray supplied the pioneers with a conveyance, and the journey was again resumed to Fort Garry. The horse was weak and the weather cold, and so Mr. Black trudged most of the way and reached the Ross mansion, near Fort Garry, at the close of his last day's walk of forty miles. Surely it needs a man of iron frame for frontier mission work! And yet Mr. Black writes of this journey with a cheerful heart: "During all these hardships and toils and disappointments, sleeping in the open air in northern frosts, I have reason to bless God I have enjoyed the most vigorous health and have not as much as caught a cold." THE CURE OF SOULS.