I was astonished. I had seen George drop a pack in the bush, where
everything for miles around looked alike to me, and without marking
the spot or apparently taking note of any guiding signs, he would
go directly to it again. I was with him one pitch-dark night when
he left a pack among alders and willows in the depth of a marsh,
and in the morning he went back two miles straight to the very
spot. How a man that could do this could get lost was beyond my
understanding. I hurried up to camp.

"How did it happen, George?" I asked.

"I just got turned 'round," he replied. "I didn't have any grub,
and I didn't have a pistol, or a fishhook, or any way to get grub,
and I didn't have a compass, and I was scared."

"But don't you know how you got lost?" I persisted.

"No, I don't," said George. "I just got lost. But I found myself
pretty quick. I never got lost before."

The only way I could account for it was that he had permitted his
thoughts to wander. I asked him what he would have done if he had
not been able to find his way back.

"Gone to the highest hill I could see," he answered with a grin,
"and made the biggest smoke I could make at its top, and waited for
you fellus to find me."

While we were talking George was busily engaged in making the fire,
putting a goose to boil and preparing water for tea. The twilight