have been hard enough to tell when those four watchers of the little
one had had their last good meal; the scraps awarded to most dogs
seldom could be spared for them,--the very bones, picked bare by the
hungry masters, were grudged them, being carefully kept, and broken
and melted down for grease (that most necessary ingredient in
Northern diet.) Sometimes indeed their famished nature would assert
itself, and they would steal something, it might be a rabbit caught
in the snare near the camp (a most tempting bait for a hungry dog) or
perchance a choice piece of dried fish hung high, yet not quite high
enough to miss the spring of "Capri" or "Muskimo;" or a piece of soap
lately purchased of the white man, or even a scrap of moose-skin
reserved as shoe leather. All helped to assuage the pangs of hunger,
yet these indulgences would be dearly purchased by the inevitable
cuffs and blows which followed, till the poor brutes, scarred and
bleeding, were fain to creep away and hide in some hole, until the
imperative call or whistle made fresh claim for their services.

How little do we know for whom we are pleading, when, morning by
morning, we beseech our dear Lord to "comfort and succour all them
who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness,
or any other adversity!" And still less able are we to realize the
countless answers to our feeble prayers already winging their way to
every portion of the inhabited globe; o'er moor and fen, o'er lake
and sea and prairie, in the crowded town and in the vast wilderness.
Was it in blessed England, where the sun has long past the meridian;
while here in the far North-West, there are but the first faint tints
of early dawn:--was it in England, or in some far distant isle of the
sea, or on some outward bound ship--where the sailor finds time but
for a few hurried words of daily prayer--that that heartfelt
petition went up, offered in the Blessed Name, which won for the