They were the long, narrow, bush-country shoe.

He placed them side by side on the snow and showed David how to fasten his moccasined feet in them without using his hands.

For three quarters of an hour after that, out in the soft, deep snow in the edge of the spruce, he gave him his first lesson in that slow, swinging, _out_-stepping stride of the north-man on the trail.

At first it was embarrassing for David, with Thoreau and the Indians grinning openly, and Marie's face peering cautiously and joyously from the cabin door.

Three times he entangled his feet hopelessly and floundered like a great fish in the snow; then he caught the "swing" of it and at the end of half an hour began to find a pleasurable exhilaration, even excitement, in his ability to skim over the feathery surface of this great white sea without so much as sinking to his ankle bones.