Then came the greatest misfortune of all.  Emily, Bob’s little sister, ventured too far out upon a cliff one day to pluck a vagrant wild flower that had found lodgment in a crevice, and in reaching for it, slipped to the rocks below.  Bob heard her scream as she fell, and ran to her assistance.  He found her lying there, quite still and white, clutching the precious blossom, and at first he thought she was dead.  He took her in his arms and carried her tenderly to the cabin.  After a while she opened her eyes and came back to consciousness, but she had never walked since.  Everything was done for the child that could be done.  Every man and woman in the Bay offered assistance and suggestions, and every one of them tried a remedy; but no relief came.

All the time things kept going from bad to worse with Richard Gray.  Few seals came in the bay that year and he had no fat to trade at the post.  The salmon fishing was a flat failure.

As the weeks went on and Emily showed no improvement Douglas Campbell came over to Wolf Bight with the suggestion,

“Take th’ maid t’ th’ mail boat doctor.  He’ll sure fix she up.”  And then they took her—­Bob and his mother—­ninety miles down the bay to the nearest port of call of the coastal mail boat, while the father remained at home to watch his salmon nets.  Here they waited until finally the steamer came and the doctor examined Emily.

“There’s nothing I can do for her,” he said.  “You’ll have to send her to St. Johns to the hospital.  They’ll fix her all right there with a little operation.”

“An’ how much will that cost?” asked Mrs. Gray.

“Oh,” he replied, “not over fifty dollars—­fifty dollars will cover it.”

“An’ if she don’t go?”

“She’ll never get well.”  Then, as a dismissal of the subject, the doctor, turning to Bob, asked:  “Well, youngster, what’s the outlook for fur next season?”

“We hopes there’ll be some, sir.”

“Get some silver foxes.  Good silvers are worth five hundred dollars cash in St. Johns.”

The mail boat steamed away with the doctor, and Bob and his mother, with Emily made as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the boat, turned homeward.

It was hard to realize that Emily would never be well again, that she would never romp over the rocks with Bob in the summer or ride with him on the sledge when he took the dogs to haul wood in the winter.  There would be no more merry laughter as she played about the cabin.  This was before the days when the mission doctors with their ships and hospitals came to the Labrador to give back life to the sick and dying of the coast.  Fifty dollars was more money than any man of the bay save Douglas Campbell had ever seen, and to expect to get such a sum was quite hopeless, for in those days the hunters were always in debt to the company, and all they ever received for their labours were the actual necessities of life, and not always these.