fe is preserved through low temperature
and frontier dangers by furs, and within a stout heart. He has
truth and moderation worthy of the father of history, which belong
only to an intimate experience; and he does not defer much to
literature."--THOREAU.

Immediately after the early dinner the little cavalcade set out for the
hermitage of Pere Michaux, which was on an island of its own at some
distance from the village island; to reach it they journeyed over the
ice. The boys' sled went first, Andre riding, the other two drawing:
they were to take turns. Then came old Antoine and his dogs,
wise-looking, sedate creatures with wide-spread, awkward legs, big paws,
and toes turned in. Rene and Lebeau were the leaders; they were dogs of
age and character, and as they guided the sledge they also kept an eye
to the younger dogs behind. The team was a local one; it was not
employed in carrying the mails, but was used by the villagers when they
crossed to the various islands, the fishing grounds, or the Indian
villages on the mainland. Old Antoine walked behind with Anne by his
side: she preferred to walk. Snugly ensconced in the sledge in a warm
nest of furs was Tita, nothing visible of her small self save her dark
eyes, which were, however, most of the time closed: here there was
nothing to watch. The bells on the dogs sounded out merrily in the
clear air: the boys had also adorned themselves with bells, and pranced
along like colts. The sunshine was intensely bright, the blue heavens
seemed full of its shafts, the ice below glittered in shining lines; on
the north and south the dark evergreens of the mainland rose above the
white, but toward the east and west the fields of ice extended unbroken
over the edge of the horizon. Here they were smooth, covered with snow;
there they were heaped in hummocks and ridges, huge blocks piled against
each other, and frozen solid in that position where the wind and the
current had met and fought. The atmosphere was cold, but so pure and
still that breathing was easier than in many localities farther toward
the south. There was no dampness, no strong raw wind; only the even
cold. A feather thrown from a house-top would have dropped softly to the
ground in a straight line, as drop one by one the broad leaves of the
sycamore on still Indian summer days. The snow itself was dry; it had
fallen at intervals during the winter, and made thicker and thicker the
soft mantle that