we hoped to avoid these bad places by taking a slanting course across the channel.  After walking backwards and forwards several times, we determined to try a light horse.  He was led out with a long piece of rope attached to his neck.  In the centre of the stream the ice seemed to bend slightly as he passed over, but no break occurred, and in safety we reached the opposite side.  Now came Blackie’s turn.  Somehow or other I felt uncomfortable about it and remarked that the horse ought to have his shoes removed before the attempt was made.  My companion, however, demurred, and his experience in these matters had extended over so many years, that I was foolishly induced to allow him to proceed as he thought fit, even against my better judgment.  Blackie was taken out, led as before, tied by a long line.  I followed close behind him, to drive him if necessary.  He did not need much driving, but took the ice quite readily.  We had got to the centre of the river, when the surface suddenly bent downwards, and, to my horror, the poor horse plunged deep into black, quick-running water!  He was not three yards in front of me when the ice broke.  I recoiled involuntarily from the black, seething chasm; the horse, though he plunged suddenly down, never let his head under water, but kept swimming manfully round and round the narrow hole, trying all he could to get upon the ice.  All his efforts were useless; a cruel wall of sharp ice struck his knees as he tried to lift them on the surface, and the current, running with immense velocity, repeatedly carried him back underneath.  As soon as the horse had broken through, the man who held the rope let it go, and the leather line flew back about poor Blackie’s head.  I got up almost to the edge of the hole, and stretching out took hold of the line again; but that could do no good nor give him any assistance in his struggles.  I shall never forget the way the poor brute looked at me—­even now, as I write these lines, the whole scene comes back in memory with all the vividness of a picture, and I feel again the horrible sensation of being utterly unable, though almost within touching distance, to give him help in his dire extremity and if ever dumb animal spoke with unutterable eloquence, that horse called to me in his agony he turned to me as to one from whom he had a right to expect assistance.  I could not stand the scene any longer.  “Is there no help for him?” I cried to the other men.  “None whatever,” was the reply; “the ice is dangerous -all around.”

Then I rushed back to the shore and up to the camp where my rifle lay, then back again to the fatal spot where the poor beast still struggled against his fate.  As I raised the rifle he looked at me so imploringly that my hand shook and trembled.  Another instant, and the deadly bullet crashed through his head, and, with one look never to be forgotten, he went down under the cold, unpitying ice!

It may have been very foolish, perhaps, for poor Blackie was only a. horse, but for all that I went back to camp, and, sitting down in the snow, cried like a child.  With my own hand I had taken my poor friend’s life; but if there should exist somewhere in the regions of space that happy Indian paradise where horses are never hungry and never tired, Blackie, at least, will forgive the hand that sent him there, if he can but see the heart that long regretted him.