play with its shaggy coated companion, and the
two in a short time became fast friends.

Once more wintry blasts blew up the valley, the ground was covered with
snow, and lakes and streams were frozen over. We had plenty of
occupation, both indoors and out, and although the days were short, the
moon for nearly half the month afforded us light sufficient to move
about with as great ease as in summer. Habited in dresses of fur, we
hunted often at considerable distances from home, either bison or deer,
or smaller animals.

On such occasions we built a shanty in some sheltered wood, of birch
bark, when it was to be procured, or boughs stuck into the ground close
together, with a thick mass of snow piled up against them, while a
cheerful fire blazed in front.

Very frequently, however, we dispensed with any shelter beyond such as
the wood afforded, and, wrapt in our blankets, lay down to sleep on the
snow, canopied by the starry vault of heaven.

Uncle Denis and I were out on one of these hunting expeditions, when, as
we were following the tracks of a deer through a wood, accompanied by
Boxer and Toby, my uncle, who was ahead, made a sign to me to advance
cautiously, while he, stopping, concealed himself behind a tree. I
crept forward as he desired, not knowing whether he had sighted a deer
or a party of Indians on the war-path. On getting up to him, I found
that he was observing the movements of two animals, very different in
appearance to each other. On the trunk of a fallen tree, stood a
porcupine, or urson, with quills erect, looking down on a smaller
animal, which I at once recognised as a marten, or rather, a sable,
which was gazing up in a defiant way, apparently meditating an attack on
the other.

"I should like to catch and tame both those animals," whispered Uncle
Denis. "Keep back the dogs or the sable will escape and the urson will
treat them in a way they are not likely to forget." The sable was
evidently bent on having some porcupine meat for breakfast, and kept
moving backwards and forwards, meditating a spring at the nose of its
formidable antagonist; but, aware of the power of the latter's tail, was
waiting for a favourable opportunity to seize it. The porcupine, though
so much larger, and naturally moving only at a slow pace, seemed aware
of the superior agility of the sable, which would enable it to spring
from side to side, or dash forward and attack it in front, when its
armed tail would ha