wder on all the dazzling
colouring, presenting nature robed in a delicate white guise each
morning, which the sun appropriated to himself as soon as he could get
above the vapours. Now were the vast waters of Canada passing from a
fluid to a solid form, giving out caloric in quantities, accompanied by
these thin mists. Towards the close of November navigation ceases on the
Ottawa; the beginning of December sees the mighty river frozen over. Yet
it lies in the latitude of Bordeaux! All honour to the benevolent Gulf
Stream which warms France and England comfortably.

When Linda's fingers were particularly cold, she would puzzle Robert and
her father with questions as to why this should be so. Mr. Holt once
told her that the prevailing wind came from the north-west across a vast
expanse of frozen continent and frozen ocean. Also that James's Bay, the
southern tongue of Hudson's, was apt to get choked with masses of ice
drifted in from the arctic seas, and which, being without a way of escape,
just jammed together and radiated cold in company on the surrounding
lands.

This explanation was given and received within earshot of a splendid
fire on one of those tremendous January mornings when the temperature
is perhaps twenty-five degrees below zero, when the very smoke cannot
disperse in the frozen atmosphere, and the breath of man and beast
returns upon them in snowy particles. Nobody cares to be out of
doors, for the air cuts like a knife, and one's garments stiffen like
sheet-iron. Linda stands at the window of the little parlour--well she
understands now why the hearth was made almost as wide as one side of
the room--and looks out on the white world, and on the coppery sun
struggling to enlighten the icy heavens, and on that strange phenomenon,
the _ver glas_, gleaming from every tree.

'Now, Mr. Holt, as you have been good enough to attempt an explanation
of the cold, perhaps you could tell me the cause of the _ver glas_? What
makes that thin incrustation of ice over the trunk and every twig which
has been attracting my admiration these three days? It was as if each
tree was dressed in a tight-fitting suit of crystal when the sun
succeeded in shining a little yesterday.'

'I imagine that the cause was the slight thaw on Monday, and the freezing
of the moisture that then covered the bark and branches into a coat of
ice. So I only _attempt_ explanations, Miss Linda.'

'Oh, but it is not your fault if they are unsatisf