resently came a strange and dismal sound wafted over the waters from
the far pine forests--a high prolonged howl, taken up and echoed by
scores of ravenous throats, repeated again and again, augmenting in
fierce cadences. Jay caught Mr. Wynn's arm closer. 'Like wolves,' said
Arthur; 'but we are a long way off.'

'I must go and tell Edith,' said the child, evidently feeling safer with
that sister than in any other earthly care. After he had brought her
to the cabin, he returned on deck, listening with a curious sort of
pleasure to the wild sounds, and looking at the dim outlines of the
shore.

As darkness dropped over the circle of land and water, a light seemed
to rise behind those hills, revealing their solid shapes anew, stealing
silently aloft into the air, like a pale and pure northern dawn. At
first he thought it must be the rising moon, but no orb appeared; and as
the brilliance deepened, intensified into colour, and shot towards the
zenith, he knew it for the aurora borealis. Soon the stars were blinded
out by the vivid sweeping flicker of its rays; hues bright and varied as
the rainbow thrilled along the iridescent roadways to the central point
above, and tongues of flame leaped from arches in the north-west. Burning
scarlet and amber, purple, green, trembled in pulsations across the
ebony surface of the heavens, as if some vast fire beneath the horizon
was flashing forth coruscations of its splendour to the dark hemisphere
beyond. The floating banners of angels is a hackneyed symbol to express
the oppressive magnificence of a Canadian aurora.

The brothers were fascinated: their admiration had no words.

'This is as bad as the iceberg for making a fellow's brain feel too big
for his head,' said Arthur at last. 'We've seen two sublime things, at
all events, Bob.'

Clear frosty weather succeeded--weather without the sharp sting of cold,
but elastic and pure as on a mountain peak. Being becalmed for a day
or two off a wooded point, the skipper sent a boat ashore for fuel and
water. Arthur eagerly volunteered to help; and after half an hour's
rowing through the calm blue bay, he had the satisfaction to press his
foot on the soil of Lower Canada.

There was a small clearing beside a brook which formed a narrow deep
cove, a sort of natural miniature dock where their boat floated. A
log hut, mossed with years, was set back some fifty yards towards the
forest. What pines were those! what giants of arborescence! S