oo
hunts.

Again he stood thinking, then darted off into the forest like a hare;
but I knew his strange, silent ways, and confidently awaited his return.
How he could get two pair of snow-shoes and two poles inside of five
minutes, I do not attempt to explain, unless some of his numerous
half-breed youngsters were at hand in the woods; but he was back again
all equipped for a long tramp, and as soon as I had laced on the
racquets, we were skimming over the drift like a boat on billows. In the
mazy confusion of snow and underbrush, no one but Paul would have found
and kept that tangled, forest path. Where great trunks had fallen across
the way, Paul planted his pole and took the barrier at a bound. Then he
raced on at a gait which was neither a run nor a walk, but an easy trot
common to the _coureurs-des-bois_. The encased branches snapped like
glass when we brushed past, and so heavily were snow and icicles frozen
to the trees we might have been in some grotesque crystal-walled cavern.
The _habitant_ spoke not a word, but on we pressed over the brushwood,
now so packed with snow and crusted ice, our snow-shoes were not once
tripped by loose branches, and we glided from drift to drift. In vain I
tried to discern a trail by the broken thicket on either side, and I
noticed that my guide was keeping his course by following the marks
blazed on trees. At one place we came to a steep, clear slope, where the
earth had fallen sheer away from the hillside and snow had filled the
incline. First prodding forward to feel if the snow-bank were solid,
Paul promptly sat down on the rear end of his snow-shoes, and, quicker
than I can tell it, tobogganed down to the valley. I came leaping
clumsily from point to point with my pole, like a ski-jumping Norwegian,
risking my neck at every bound. Then we coursed along the valley, the
_habitant's_ eyes still on the trees, and once he stopped to emit a
gurgling laugh at a badly hacked trunk, beneath which was a snowed-up
sap trough; but I could not divine whether Paul's mirth were over a
prospect of sugaring-off in the maple-woods, or at some foolish
_habitant_ who had tapped the maple too early. How often had I known my
guide to exhaust city athletes in these swift marches of his! But I had
been schooled to his pace from boyhood and kept up with him at every
step, though we were going so fast I lost all track of my bearings.

"Where to, Paul?" I asked with a vague suspicion that we were headi