“Hang your adikeys on the pegs there and get warmed up,” our host invited.  “Dinner’s a’most ready.  ’Tis a wonderful frosty day to be cruisin’.”

We did as he directed, and then seated ourselves on chests that he pulled forward for seats.  He had many questions to ask concerning the folk to the northward, their health and their luck at the winter’s trapping, until, presently, the woman brought forth from the oven and placed upon the table a pan of deliciously browned, smoking meat.

“Set in!  Set in!” beamed our host. “’Tis fine you comes today and not yesterday,” adding as we drew up to the table:  “All we’d been havin’ to give you yesterday and all th’ winter, were bread and tea.  Game’s been wonderful scarce, and this is the first bit o’ meat we has th’ whole winter, barrin’ a pa’tridge or two in November.  But this marnin’ I finds a lynx in one o’ my traps, and a fine prime skin he has.  I’ll show un to you after we eats, though he’s on the dryin’ board and you can’t see the fur of he.”

We bowed our heads while the host asked the blessing.  The Labradorman rarely omits the blessing, and often the meal is closed with a final thanks, for men of the wilderness live near to God.  He is very near to them and they reverence Him.

“Help yourself, sir!  Help yourself!”

Each of us helped himself sparingly to the cat meat.  There was bread, but no butter, and there was hot tea with black molasses for sweetening.

“Take more o’ th’ meat now!  Help yourselves!  Don’t be afraid of un,” our hospitable host urged, and we did help ourselves again, for it was good.

Whenever we passed within hailing distance of a cabin, we had to stop for a “cup o’ hot tea, whatever.”  Otherwise the people would have felt sorely hurt.  We seldom found more elaborate meals than bread, tea and molasses, rarely butter, and of course never any vegetables.

We soon discovered that we could not pay the head of the family for our entertainment, but where there were children we left money with the mother with which to buy something for the little ones, which doubtless would be clothing or provisions for the family.  If there were no children we left the money on the table or somewhere where it surely would be discovered after our departure.

I remember one of this fine breed of men well.  I met him on this journey, and he once drove dog team for me—­Uncle Willie Wolfrey.  Doctor Grenfell says of him: 

“Uncle Willie isn’t a scholar, a social light, or a capitalist magnate, but all the same ten minutes’ visit to Uncle Willie Wolfrey is worth five dollars of any man’s investment.”

It requires a lot of physical energy for any man to tramp the trails day after day through a frigid, snow-covered wilderness, and months of it at a stretch.  It is a big job for a young and hearty man, and a tremendous one for a man of Uncle Willie’s years.  And it is a man’s job, too, to handle a boat in all weather, in calm and in gale, in clear and in fog, sixteen to twenty hours a day, and the fisherman’s day is seldom shorter than that.  The fish must be caught when they are there to be caught, and they must be split and salted the day they are caught, and then there’s the work of spreading them on the “flakes,” and turning them, and piling and covering them when rain threatens.