on which occasion she tripped and fell into the snow,
as a matter of course, and was advised to wait till she was older. It
recalled the memory of her father's team of dogs, and the delightful
drives she used to have over the frozen river; which drives often
resulted in an upset, perhaps several, and always resulted in fun. It
recalled the house in the old fort that used to be her home; the row of
houses belonging to the men, to which she often went, and was always
welcomed as a great favourite; the water-hole on the river from which
the old Canadian drew his daily supply; and the snow-house in the yard
which she built in company with Frank Morton, and which stood the whole
winter through, but gave way at last before the blazing sun of spring,
and fell--as ill luck would have it--when she and Chimo were sitting
there, so that she and the dog together had a hard struggle ere they got
free. All these, and many more thick-coming memories of other days,
were aroused by the vision of snow that met Edith's gaze that morning,
and caused her heart with peculiar fervour to rejoice.

Winter had now descended with iron grasp upon Ungava. For some weeks
the frost had been so intense that every lake and pool was frozen many
inches thick, and the salt bay itself was fringed with a thick and
ever-accumulating mass of ice. The snow which now fell was but the
ceremonial coronation of a king whose reign had commenced in reality
long before.

But the sunshine did not last long. The rolling fogs and vapours of the
open and ice-laden sea beyond ascended over the wild mountains, obscured
the bright sky, and revealed the winter of the north in all its stern,
cold reality. Every cliff and crag and jagged peak had its crown of
snow, and every corrie, glen, and gorge its drifted shroud. In places
where the precipices were perpendicular, the grey rocks of the mountains
formed dark blotches in the picture; but, dark although they were, they
did not equal in blackness the river, on which floated hundreds of
masses of ice and several ponderous icebergs, which had been carried up
from the sea by the flood-tide. Over this inky expanse the frost-smoke
hung like a leaden pall--an evil spirit, as it were, which never left
the spot till protracted and intense frost closed the waters of the
river altogether, and banished it farther out to sea. But this entire
closing of the river very seldom happened, and never lasted long.

Fort Chimo itself,