ut half a dozen
wooden huts, and the liquor saloon kept by Oily Dave when he was at
home, and shut up when he was absent on fishing expeditions.

Although houses were so scarce, there was no lack of trade for the
lonely store in the woods. All through the summer there was a
procession of birchbark canoes, filled with red men and white,
coming down the river to the bay, laden with skins of wolf, fox,
beaver, wolverine, squirrel, and skunk, the harvest of the winter's
trapping. Then in winter the cove and the river were often crowded
with boats, driven to anchorage there by the ice, and to escape the
fearful storms sweeping over the bay. The river was more favoured
as an anchorage than the cove, because it was more sheltered, and
also because there was open water at the foot of the rapids even in
the severest winter, and had been so long as anyone could remember.

As the morning wore on, Katherine's mood became even more restless,
and she simply yearned for the fresh air and the sunshine. She was
usually free to go out-of-doors in the afternoons, because the boys
only worked until noon, and then again in the evening, when it was
night school, and Katherine did her best with such of the fisher
folk as preferred learning to loafing and gambling in Oily Dave's
saloon.

Even Miles seemed stupid this morning, for he was usually such a
good worker; while Phil was quite hopeless. Both boys were bitten
with the snow mania, and longing to be out-of-doors, in all the
exhilarating brilliancy of sunshine, frost, and snow. Noon came at
last, books were packed away; the boys rushed off like mad things,
while Katherine went more soberly across the store and entered the
living-room, which was sitting-room and kitchen combined.

An older girl was there, looking too young to be called a woman,
but who nevertheless was a widow, and the mother of the twin girls
who were rolling on the floor and playing with a big, shaggy
wolfhound. She was Nellie, Mrs. Burton, whose husband had been
drowned while sealing when the twins were twelve months old. Mrs.
Burton had come home to live then, and keep house for her father,
so that Katherine might go to Montreal to finish her education.

"Did you see Father as you came through the store?" Mrs. Burton
asked, as she rapidly spread the dinner on the table in the centre
of the room, while Katherine joined in the frolic that was going on
with the twins and the dog.

"No, he was not there," Ka