mighty
logs; the travellers lay down side by side and in a few minutes snored
in concert; the flames leaped upwards, and the sparks, entangling
themselves on the snow-encrusted branches of bush and tree, gleamed
there for an instant, or, escaping, flew gaily away into the wintry sky.

While the two men were sleeping, a change came over the scene--a slow,
gentle, scarce perceptible change, which, however, had a powerful
influence on the prospects of the sleepers. The sky became overcast;
the temperature, which had been down at arctic depth for many months,
suddenly rose to that of temperate climes, and snow began to fall--not
in the small sharp particles to which the fur-traders of the great
northern wilderness are accustomed, but in the broad, heavy flakes that
one often sees in England. Softly, silently, gently they fell, like the
descent of a sweet influence--but steadily, persistently, continuously,
until every object in nature became smothered in the soft white garment.
Among other objects the two sleepers were buried.

The snow began by powdering them over. Had any one been there to
observe the process, he would have seen by the bright light of the
camp-fire that the green blankets in which they were wrapt became
piebald first; then assumed a greyish-green colour, which speedily
changed into a greenish-grey, and finally into a pure white. The two
sleepers might thus have represented those figures in chiselled marble
on the tombs of crusaders, had it not been that they lay doubled up, for
warmth--perhaps also for comfort--with their knees at their chins,
instead of flat on their backs with their hands pressed together. By
degrees the correct outline of their forms became an incorrect outline,
and gradually more and more rotund--suggesting the idea that the buried
ones were fat.

As the night wore on the snow accumulated on them until it lay several
inches deep. Still they moved not. Strong, tired and healthy men are
not easily moved. The fire of course sank by degrees until it reached
that point where it failed to melt the snow; then it was quickly
smothered out and covered over. The entire camp was also buried; the
tin kettle being capped with a knob peculiarly its own, and the
snow-shoes and other implements having each their appropriate outline,
while some hundredweights, if not tons, of the white drapery gathered on
the branches overhead. It was altogether an overwhelming state of
things, and the on