“But do have a care, Bob.  An’—­an’—­I wants to tell you how glad I is o’ your good luck, an’ I hopes you’ll make a grand hunt—­I knows you will.  An’—­Bob, we’ll miss you th’ winter.”

“Thank you, Bessie.  An’ I’ll think o’ th’ fine time I’m missin’ at Christmas an’ th’ New Year.  Good-bye, Bessie.”

“Good-bye, Bob.”

The fifteen miles across the Bay to Wolf Bight with a fair wind was soon run.  Bob ate a late dinner, and then made everything snug for the journey.  His flour was put into small, convenient sacks, his cooking utensils consisting of a frying pan, a tin pail in which to make tea, a tin cup and a spoon were placed in a canvas bag by themselves, and in another bag was packed a Hudson’s Bay Company four-point blanket, two suits of underwear, a pair of buckskin mittens with a pair of duffel ones inside them, and an extra piece of the duffel for an emergency, six pairs of knit woollen socks, four pairs of duffel socks or slippers (which his mother had made for him out of heavy blanket-like woollen cloth), three pairs of buckskin moccasins for the winter and an extra pair of sealskin boots (long legged moccasins) for wet weather in the spring.

He also laid aside, for daily use on the journey, an adikey made of heavy white woollen cloth, with a fur trimmed hood, and a lighter one, to be worn outside of the other, and made of gray cotton.  The adikey or “dikey,” as Bob called it, was a seamless garment to be drawn on over the head and worn instead of a coat.  The underclothing and knit socks had been purchased at the trading post, but every other article of clothing, including boots, moccasins and mitts, his mother had made.

A pair of snow-shoes, a file for sharpening axes, a “wedge” tent of gray cotton cloth and a sheet iron tent stove about twelve inches square and eighteen inches long with a few lengths of pipe placed inside of it were likewise put in readiness.  The stove and pipe Bob’s father had manufactured.

No packing was left to be done Sunday, for though there was no church to go to, the Grays, and for that matter all of the Bay people, were close observers of the Sabbath, and left no work to be done on that day that could be done at any other time.

Early on Sunday evening, Dick and Ed and Bill Campbell came over in their boat from Kenemish, where they had spent the previous night.  It had been a short day for Bob, the shortest it seemed to him he had ever known, for though he was anxious to be away and try his mettle with the wilderness, these were the last hours for many long weary months that he should have at home with his father and mother and Emily.  How the child clung to him!  She kept him by her side the livelong day, and held his hand as though she were afraid that he would slip away from her.  She stroked his cheek and told him how proud she was of her big brother, and warned him over and over again,

“Now, Bob, do be wonderful careful an’ not go handy t’ th’ Nascaupees for they be dreadful men, fierce an’ murderous.”