The boy took up the report as he was bidden, and read it with avidity. Presently, upon a boyish exclamation, the other spoke: "What's that one you've struck?" "It's the enumerator from the district of Chandler," answered Hamilton. "Go ahead and read it aloud," Barnes said, "I can go on with these schedules just as well while you do." "'At no time after he left Fairbanks,'" read the boy, "'did the thermometer get above 30 degrees below zero. His long journey away from a base of supplies made it impossible for him to carry a sufficient supply of grub, and he was obliged to live off the country, killing moose, mountain sheep, and other fresh meat. He froze portions of his face several times, and on one occasion dropped into six feet of open water, nearly losing his life in consequence.'" "That would be fearful," said Barnes, "unless he could pitch camp right there, put up a tent, build a fire, and change into dry clothing." "There seems to have been mighty little wood for that up there," Hamilton remarked, "because, speaking of this same enumerator, the supervisor says, further on, 'In crossing the Arctic Range and in returning he traveled above timber line eighteen hours in both directions, which, in a country where fire is a necessity, can be understood is a very considerable sacrifice. He traveled in many places where a white man had never been before, and as there are no beaten trails or government roads in the district anywhere, he was obliged, everywhere, to snow-shoe ahead of his team to beat down a trail.'" "Did you ever snow-shoe?" asked Barnes abruptly. "Once," answered Hamilton, "when I went to Canada to visit some cousins; they had a snow-shoe tramp and insisted on my coming along. But I was stiff for a week." "Well," said the editor, "when you try to break trail and have to keep ahead of a dog-team coming along at a fair clip, it's just about the hardest kind of work there is." "They all seem to have had their own troubles," said Hamilton, who had been glancing down the pages of the report: "here's the next chap, who got caught in a blizzard while accompanying the mail carrier, and if it hadn't been for the fact that the people of the nearest settlement knew that the mail carrier was expected on that day and sent out a rescue party to search for him, neither of the two men would ever have been found, and the census would have lost a man." "That was up in the Tanana region, wasn't it?" queried Barnes, but without looking up from his work.