ntly down to forty-five degrees
below zero of Fahrenheit's scale, while the ice measured between five
and six feet in thickness on the rivers.

But the great, significant, and prevailing feature of that winter was
snow. Never within the memory of man had there been such heavy,
continuous, persistent snow. It blocked up the windows so that men had
constantly to clear a passage for daylight. It drifted up the doors so
that they were continually cutting passages for themselves to the world
outside. It covered the ground to such an extent that fences began to
be obliterated, and landmarks to disappear, and it weighted the roofs
down until some of the weaker among them bid fair to sink under the
load.

"A severe winter" was old Mr Ravenshaw's usual morning remark as he
went to the windows, pipe in hand, before breakfast. To which his
better half invariably replied, "Never saw anything like it before;" and
Miss Trim remarked, "It is awful."

"It snows hard--whatever," was Angus Macdonald's usual observation about
the same hour. To which his humble and fast friend Peegwish--who
assisted in his kitchen--was wont to answer, "Ho!" and glare solemnly,
as though to intimate that his thoughts were too deep for utterance.

Thus the winter passed away, and when spring arrived it had to wage an
unusually fierce conflict before it gained the final victory over ice
and snow.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

VICTORY!

But before that winter closed, ay, before it began, a great victory was
gained, which merits special mention here. Let us retrace our steps a
little.

One morning, while Ian Macdonald was superintending the preparation of
breakfast in some far-away part of the western wilderness, and Michel
Rollin was cutting firewood, Victor Ravenshaw came rushing into camp
with the eager announcement that he had seen the footprints of an
_enormous_ grizzly bear!

At any time such news would have stirred the blood of Ian, but at that
time, when the autumn was nearly over, and hope had almost died in the
breast of our scholastic backwoodsman, the news burst upon him with the
thrilling force of an electric shock.

"Now, Ian, take your gun and go in and win," said Victor with
enthusiasm, for the youth had been infected with Rollin's spirit of
gallantry.

"You see," Rollin had said to Victor during a confidential
_tete-a-tete_, "ven a lady is in de case ye must bow de head. Ian do
love your sister. Ver goot. Your sister do vish f