me night came to a little
village. He happened to have a very beautiful leader of which he was
inordinately careful, so he asked his host for the night if he had a
shed into which he could put Spider out of the weather. "Why, to be
sure, just at the left of the door." It was dark and blowing, and the
doctor went outside and thrust the beastie into the only building in
sight. After breakfast he went with his host to get the dogs. When he
started to open the door of the shelter in which Spider was
incarcerated, the fisherman burst out in dismay, "You never put him in
there? That's where I keeps my only sheep." At that second the dog
appeared, a spherical and satisfied specimen. He had taken the
stranger in--completely.

[Illustration: HE HAD TAKEN THE STRANGER IN]

The cold is intense, and to combat it in these buildings of green
lumber is a task worthy of Hercules. We make futile attempts to keep
the pipes from freezing; but the north wind has a new trump each
night. He squeezes in through every chink and cranny, and once inside
the house goes whistling malignantly through the chilly rooms and
corridors. We keep an oil stove burning in our bathroom at night with
a kettle of water on it ready for our morning ablutions. To-day, when
I went in to dress--one does not dress in one's bedroom, but waits in
bed till the bathroom door's warning slam informs that the coast is
clear--there was the stove still merrily burning, and there was the
kettle of water on it--FROZEN.

Next month there is to be a sale in Nameless Cove, twelve miles to the
westward of us. The doctor has asked me to attend. I accepted
delightedly, as twenty-four hours free from fear of rats and frozen
pipes draws me like a magnet. Moreover, who wouldn't be on edge if it
were one's first dog drive!

I found Gabriel crying bitterly in bed the other night because he had
in a fit of mischief thrown a stone at the Northern lights, which is
regarded as an act of impiety by the Eskimo people. It was some time
before I could pacify the child, or get him to believe that no dire
results would follow his dreadful deed. But at length when "comforting
time" was come for him, he consoled himself by supposing that Teacher
must be "stronger than the devil."

_December 27_

I certainly was never born to be a teacher and it is something to
discover one's limitations. For several Sundays now I have been
labouring to instruct our little ones in the story of the