' exclaimed Arthur. 'How the snow has
buried them; they look stunted. I suppose up here's the creek;' and he
laid his hand beside his mouth to shout a signal to the shanty, which
was smothered immediately in the greater tumult of the storm.

Mr. Holt left the grounded ice-boat, and proceeded farther inland to
examine the locality, returning in a few minutes, when Arthur had his
skates off, with the information that this was merely a cove running
in among trees, and by no means the estuary of a stream.

'Now you know, Holt, if this isn't our creek it must be our swamp, and
I'm blinded and petrified on that lake. Do let us get overland to the
shanty. I'm certain we would travel faster; and we can haul up the planks
to-morrow or next day. You see it's getting quite dark.'

'And do you think the pathless forest will be more lightsome than the
open ice? No; we'd better kindle a fire, and camp out to-night. I'm
pretty sure we must have passed Cedar Creek without knowing.'

Arthur was already so drowsy from the excessive cold that he was
only glad of the pretext for remaining still, and yielding to the
uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and
commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about
himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread
under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. The sight of the flame
seemed to wake up Arthur with a shock from the lethargy that was stealing
over his faculties. Mr. Holt had chosen a good site for his fire in the
lee of a great body of pines, whose massive stems broke the wind; so
the blaze quickened and prospered, till a great bed of scarlet coals
and ends of fagots remained of the first relay of fuel, and another was
heaped on. Now Arthur was glowing to his fingers' ends, thoroughly wide
awake, and almost relishing the novelty of his lodgings for the night;
with snow all around, curtaining overhead, carpeting under foot.

'Curious way they camp out in the Far West,' said Holt, with his arms
round his knees, as he sat on their hemlock mattress and gazed into the
fire, wherein all old memories seem ever to have a trysting-place with
fancy. And so scenes of his roving years came back to him.

'You must know that out in the Hudson's Bay territory the snow is often
ten or fourteen feet deep, not only in drifts, but in smooth even layers,
obliterating the country inequalities wonderfully. That's the native
land of snow-s