firmly caught across the hand above the knuckles. Not greatly
alarmed at this, I tried to reach the trap-wrench with my right foot.
Stretching out at full length, face downward, I worked myself
toward it, making my imprisoned arm as long and straight as
possible. I could not see and reach at the same time, but counted
on my toe telling me when I touched the little iron key to my
fetters. My first effort was a failure; strain as I might at the chain
my toe struck no metal. I swung slowly around. my anchor, but
still failed. Then a painfully taken observation showed I was much
too far to the west. I set about working around, tapping blindly
with my toe to discover the key. Thus wildly groping with my right
foot I forgot about the other till there was a sharp 'clank' and the
iron jaws of trap No. S closed tight on my left foot.

The terrors of the situation did not, at first, impress me, but I soon
found that all my struggles were in vain. I could not get free from
either trap or move the traps together, and there I lay stretched out
and firmly staked to the ground.

What would become of me now? There was not much danger of
freezing for the cold weather was over, but Kennedy's Plain was
never visited by the winter wood-cutters. No one knew where I had
gone, and unless I could manage to free myself there was no
prospect ahead but to be devoured by wolves, or else die of cold
and starvation.

As I lay there the red sun went down over the spruce swamp west
of the plain, and a shorelark on a gopher mound a few yards off
twittered his evening song, just as one had done the night before at
our shanty door, and though the numb pains were creeping up my