The March of the White Guard | Page 6

that follows is taken from his diary. It

tells that day's life, and so gives an idea of harder, sterner days that they
had spent and must yet spend, on this weary journey.
December 25th.--This is Christmas Day and Camp twenty-seven. We
have marched only five miles to-day. We are eighty miles from Great
Fish River, and the worst yet to do. We have discovered no signs. Jeff
Hyde has had a bad two days with his frozen foot. Gaspe Toujours
helps him nobly. One of the dogs died this morning. Bouche is a great
leader. This night's shelter is a god-send. Cloud-in-the-Sky has a plan
whereby some of us will sleep well. We are in latitude 63deg 47' and
longitude 112deg 32' 14". Have worked out lunar observations. Have
marked a tree JH/27 and raised cairn No. 3.
We are able to celebrate Christmas Day with a good basin of tea and
our stand-by of beans cooked in fat. I was right about them: they have
great sustaining power. To-morrow we will start at ten o'clock.
The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards
the rest. Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking. Little
could be seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes. Gaspe
Toujours was drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing
by the fire. The dogs were above in the tent--all but Bouche, who was
permitted to be near his master. Presently the sub-factor rose, took from
a knapsack a small tin pail, and put it near the fire. Then he took five
little cups that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put
them also near the fire. None of the party spoke. A change seemed to
pass over the faces of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky. He smoked on
unmoved. At length Hume spoke cheerily: "Now, men, before we turn
in we'll do something in honour of the day. Liquor we none of us have
touched since we started; but back there in the fort, and maybe in other
places too, they will be thinking of us; so we'll drink a health to them,
though it's but a spoonful, and to the day when we see them again!"
The cups were passed round. The sub-factor measured out a very small
portion to each. They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives
were rigid and isolated and severe. Fireside comforts under fortunate
conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to expressing
their feelings demonstratively. But each man then, save Cloud-in-the-

Sky, had some memory worth a resurrection.
Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example. "To absent
friends and the day when we see them again!" he said; and they all
drank. Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near,
made the sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed, soft-
cheeked habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had left
behind seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come
from the parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in
his homely patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would
write again, no word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for
whom the candles had been lighted and masses had been said.
But Jeff Hyde's eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas
Day upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the
blind fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the
ball, and the long drive home in the frosty night.
Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach
his first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before. And Late Carscallen,
slow of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that
brilliant brother. In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart,
the slow and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and
to be this night on his way to the Barren Grounds. But as he stood with
the cup to his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a
few months before. It stated that "the Reverend James Carscallen, D.D.,
preached before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of
lunching with Her Majesty afterwards." Remembering that, Late
Carscallen rubbed his left hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and
drank.
Cloud-in-the-Sky's thoughts were with the present, and his "Ugh!" of
approval was one of the senses purely. Instead of drinking to absent
friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: "How!" He drank to the
subfactor.
Jaspar Hume had a memory