nd window sills of the house opposite that was on fire
last night; they froze there as the water was dashed up against the
building whilst it was still blazing within.

No wonder that yonder country woman is selling her milk by the lump out
of a sack, or that her husband, who is a bit of a humourist, has stuck
up on their legs his half dozen dead pigs to glare at the passers-by as
though they were still alive. There are half a score of Red Indians
too; their tribe has pitched its wigwams in the forest at a little
distance from the town, and they have come in to loaf about and pick up
anything they can, or in the hope of getting some good-natured Canadian
to treat them to the deadly fire-water. There they stand looking
stolidly at the house of Pierre Lebon the baker, which is in a pretty
plight, to be sure. It is a corner house, and round that unlucky
corner the snow has whirled and eddied all night long till it has
formed a pyramid-shaped hill twenty feet high against the side of the
building, utterly burying the doorway, and even covering one of the
upper windows, which it at last forced in. All along the little street
beyond, for a score of yards at least, there is a bare patch of
pavement on which the giddy blasts have not allowed a single flake of
snow to settle.

Besides these Indians, there is a girl of the same tribe on the
market-place, come to dispose of her little store of bark work
embroidered with porcupine-quills, and gaily ornamented moccasins. She
too is picturesque enough with her dark handsome face, surmounted by a
quaint cap of white feathers, and her large cloak of white fox skins,
beneath which peep out her scarlet leggings, and a pair of moccasins,
not smartly decorated like those she has for sale, but made of plain
buff leather, better suited to the great flat snow-shoes by her side,
with which she has made her way hither across the deep snow. She
speaks but little, yet her keen and watchful glances show that she is
by no means unobservant of what is going on around her. See! one of
the market women has stopped just in front of her, but it is only to
have a good look at the glossy wrapper, white as snow, which glistens
quite dazzlingly in the bright sunlight.

"Ah, child," says the woman, good-humouredly, as the girl rises and
stands upright before her, "no one is likely to take you for the 'Black
Lady of Sorel.'"

Contrary to her wont, for she seldom speaks except when directly
questio