deepened, and ere we realised it darkness had come. Every moment
we expected to hear Hubbard, but he did not appear.

"Another man lost," said I, with a forced lightness that illy
concealed the anxiety George and I both felt; we knew that Hubbard
not only had nothing to eat, but no matches to make a fire.

Frequently we stopped our work and talk, to peer into the gathering
night and listen for the breaking of a twig. At length I took my
rifle and fired at intervals half a dozen shots; but the reports
echoed and died away without a reply. A damp north wind chilled
the air, and the gloom seemed particularly oppressive.

"Hubbard will have a hard night out there in the bush," said
George.

"Yes," I replied; "I don't suppose we can expect him back now
before morning; and when a man is lost in this wild country it's
pretty hard to find a little tent all by itself."

I was thinking of my own experience farther back, and what might
happen should Hubbard fail to find us or we him. He was not so
fortunate as I had been, in that there was no river to guide his
return. However, at five o'clock in the morning he appeared. He had
spent a miserable night on a ridge two miles to the southward, wet
and shivering, with no fire, and tormented by mosquitoes. He
reported that from the ridge he could hear the roar of a rapid.
Darkness had prevented him from going on, and he had not seen the
rapid, but he was sure it was a part of a big river.