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
helpless infant on the river-bank the succour brought her?
A small birch-bark canoe was wending its way up the river on the
morning following that on which Michel's wife had met her death. It
came from Fort Little Rapids, and was proceeding to Fort Simpson,
some 500 miles up the rivet. There were three men in the canoe, a
Cree, or Swampy Indian, in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company,
and two Slaves or Etcha-Ottine of Mackenzie River. They were paddling
rapidly, having lately been ashore for breakfast, and being anxious
to reach Fort Simpson as soon as possible.
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