them round the stove to dry, and then
pitter-pattered up the cold, bare stairs in their bare feet. I was
shown into the spare room and given a candle, and when I bade them
good-night and turned to close the door, I discovered that there was no
door to close, nor was there even a curtain to screen me from view.
The bed, however, was an old-fashioned wooden affair with a big solid
footboard, so I concluded that in case of any one passing the doorway,
I could crouch behind the foot of the bed. Then, when I blew out my
candle, I got a great surprise, for lo and behold! I could see all over
the house! I could see "Paw and Maw" getting undressed, Athabasca
saying her prayers, and the half-breed maids getting into bed.

How did it happen? The cracks between the upright boards of my
partition were so wide that I could have shoved my fingers through. As
a matter of fact, Mr. Spear explained next day, the lumber being green,
rather than nail the boards tightly into place, he had merely stood
them up, and waited for them to season.

During the night the cold grew intense, and several times I was
startled out of my sleep by a frosty report from the ice and snow on
the roof that reminded one of the firing of a cannon.

In the morning when the geese began screeching in the lower hall, I
thought it was time to get up, and was soon in the very act of pulling
off a certain garment over my head when one of the half-breed
maids--the red-headed one whose hair Mr. Spear had cut off with the
horse clippers--intruded herself into my room to see if I were going to
be down in time for breakfast, and I had to drop behind the foot of the
bed.

At breakfast, the first course was oatmeal porridge; the second,
"Son-in-law"; the third, fried bacon, toast, and tea; after which we
all put on our wraps for our five-mile trip across God's Lake to Fort
Consolation. Everyone went, maids, chore-boy, and all, and everyone
made the trip on snowshoes--all save the trader's wife, who rode in
state, in a carriole, hauled by a tandem train of four dogs.

THE NEW YEAR'S DANCE

It was a beautiful sunny day and the air was very still; and though the
snow was wind-packed and hard, the footing was very tiresome, for the
whole surface of the lake was just one endless mass of hard-packed
snowdrifts that represented nothing so much as a great, stormy,
white-capped sea that had been instantly congealed. And for us it was
just up and down, in and out, up an