stiff breeze to-night.--Take
care, Eda; your crown's in danger."

"Oh! so it is," cried Edith, snatching back her piece, and looking with
intense earnestness at the board.

Frank might have observed, had he not been too deeply engaged with his
game, that the expected stiff breeze had already come, and was whistling
round the fort with considerable vigour.

"You'll beat me, Eda, if you play so boldly," said Frank, with a smile.
"There, give me another crown."

"And me too," said Edith, pushing up her piece. As she spoke, the door
burst open, and Stanley sprang into the room.

"Whew! what a night!" he cried, shutting the door with a forcible bang,
in order to keep out the snow-drift that sought to enter along with him.

Two moves would have made Frank the conqueror, but the gust of wind
upset the board, and scattered the men upon the floor.

Stanley looked like a man of white marble, but the removal of his cap,
coat, and leggings produced a speedy and entire metamorphosis.

"Ho! La Roche!"

"Oui, monsieur."

"Here, take my coat and shake the snow off it, and let's have supper as
speedily as may be. The draughts without, Frank, are a little too
powerful for the draughts within, I fear.--What, wife, making another
coat? One would think you had vowed to show your affection for me by
the number of coats you made. How many have you perpetrated since we
were married?"

"Never mind; go and put on one now, and come to supper while it is hot."

"I'm glad it is hot," cried Stanley from his bedroom. "One needs
unusual heat within to make up for the cold without. The thermometer is
thirty below."

While the party in the hall were enjoying their evening meal, the men
were similarly employed beside the stove in their own habitation. There
was not much difference in the two apartments, save that the confusion
in that of the men was much greater, in consequence of the miscellaneous
mass of capotes, caps, belts, discarded moccasins, axes, guns, and
seal-spears, with which they saw fit to garnish the walls. The fumes of
tobacco were also more dense, and the conversation more uproarious.

"'Tis a howlin' night," observed Massan, as a gust of more than usual
violence shook the door on its hinges.

"Me t'ink de snow-drift am as t'ick in de sky as on de ground," said
Oolibuck, drawing a live coal from the fire and lighting his pipe
therewith.

"Hould on, boys!" cried Bryan, seizing his chair with both hands, half