nion with the fair and gentle Marie. As is usual at this
festive season of the year, it was arranged that a ball should be given
at the fort in the large hall to all the people that chanced to be there
at the time.

Old Laroche had been sent to a small hut a long day's march from the
fort, where he was wont to spend his time in trapping foxes. He was
there alone, so, three days before New Year's Day, Jasper set out with
Arrowhead to visit the old man, and bear him company on his march back
to the fort.

There are no roads in that country. Travellers have to plod through the
wilderness as they best can. It may not have occurred to my reader that
it would be a difficult thing to walk for a day through snow so deep,
that, at every step, the traveller would sink the whole length of his
leg. The truth is, that travelling in Rupert's Land in winter would be
impossible but for a machine which enables men to walk on the surface of
the snow without sinking more than a few inches. This machine is the
snowshoe. Snow-shoes vary in size and form in different parts of the
country, but they are all used for the same purpose. Some are long and
narrow; others are nearly round. They vary in size from three to six
feet in length, and from eight to twenty inches in breadth. They are
extremely light--made of a frame-work of hard wood, and covered with a
network of deer-skin, which, while it prevents the wearer from sinking
more than a few inches, allows any snow that may chance to fall on the
top of the shoe to pass through the netting.

The value of this clumsy looking machine may be imagined, when I say
that men with them will easily walk twenty, thirty, and even forty miles
across a country over which they could not walk three miles without such
helps.

It was a bright, calm, frosty morning when Jasper and his friend set out
on their short journey. The sun shone brilliantly, and the hoar-frost
sparkled on the trees and bushes, causing them to appear as if they had
been covered with millions of diamonds. The breath of the two men came
from their mouths like clouds of steam. Arrowhead wore the round
snow-shoes which go by the name of bear's paws--he preferred these to
any others. Jasper wore the snow-shoes peculiar to the Chipewyan
Indians. They were nearly as long as himself, and turned up at the
point. Both men were dressed alike, in the yellow leathern costume of
winter. The only difference being that Jasper wore a