‘Strange!’ exclaimed Geoffrey lightly. ‘To me they afford an unfailing source of satisfaction. I rarely order a dinner without thinking of the days when my vital powers were sustained—“sustained” is hardly the word, say rather “suspended”—by mouldy pemmican. I seldom open a new box of cigars without remembering those doleful hours in which I smoked dried grass, flavoured with the last scrapings of nicotine from my meerschaum. It is the converse of what somebody says about a sorrow’s crown of sorrow. The memory of past hardship sweetens the comfort of the present. But I do shudder sometimes when I remember awakening from _my_ delirium to find _you_ down with brain-fever, and poor little Schanck sitting awestricken by your side, like a man who had been holding converse with spirits. I don’t mean schnapps, but something uncanny. Thank God, those Canadian emigrants found us out soon afterwards, or He only knows how our story would have ended.’ ‘Thank God!’ echoed Lucius solemnly. ‘I know nothing of my illness, can remember nothing till I found myself strapped like a bundle upon a horse’s back, riding through the snow.’ ‘We moved you before you were quite right in your head,’ answered Geoffrey apologetically. ‘The Canadians wouldn’t wait any longer. It was our only chance of being put into the right track.’ ‘You did a wise thing, Geoff. It was good for me to wake up far from that wretched log-hut.’ ‘Come now, after all, we had some very jolly times there,’ said Geoffrey, with his habit of making the best of life; ‘sitting by the blazing pine-logs jawing away like old boots. It was only when our ’baccy ran out that existence became a burden. I give you my honour that sometimes when civilised life begins to hang heavy, I look back to the days when we crossed the Rocky Mountains with a regretful sigh. I almost envy that plucky little German sea-captain who left us at Victoria, and went on to San Francisco to dig for gold.’ ‘I verily believe, Geoff, you would have contrived to be cheerful in the Black Hole at Calcutta, or on the middle passage. You have a limitless reserve fund of animal spirits.’ ‘There you’re wrong. I believed as much myself till the other day. But I have lately discovered a latent faculty hitherto unsuspected even by myself; the capacity for being miserable.’ ‘You have sustained some family affliction,—or you have taken to wearing tight boots?’