ghie," said Ben, "you've kept us here a good half hour later
than tea time, and Mrs. Lund will think we've done well to waste her
time in listening to your stories."

"Well, we can see enough to assure us that the ice won't break up on the
bar to-morrow," said Lund; "but you may get your ice-boats ready at
once, for the next thaw, with a north-easter after it, will leave all
clear along the ship channel to the harbor's mouth."

There was quite a pleasurable excitement among the stay-at-homes at the
tea table, when the incipient breaking up of the ice was declared; for
on the proximity of narrow feeding-grounds to the ice-houses depended
the hopes of good sport of our adventurers. To be sure they had thus far
had nothing to complain of; but the geese killed had been merely
"flight" geese, weary with long migration, thin with want of food, and
seeking among the treacherous lures only a rest from their long
wandering in the safe companionship of their own kind.

Very shortly after supper the whole household retired, but, save the
accustomed prayers, which few, either Catholic or Protestant, forget in
that still "unsophisticated" land, it is to be feared that the Sabbath
was to them little but a literal "day of rest," in its purest physical
sense.

Monday morning a glassy look to the snow-crust induced the younger
members of the party to use their skates in going to their stands, and
as La Salle drew his from his feet to deposit them in his undisturbed
stand, his eyes caught, amid the distant ice-spires, the mazy flight of
what he took to be a flock of brent, headed in-shore.

Signaling to Davies to get under cover, he sprang into his own stand,
and, crouching amid the straw, hastily drew over his black fur cap his
linen havelock, and looking well to the priming of his gun, sought the
whereabouts of the swift-flying birds.

Unlike the slower Canada geese, these birds seldom fly high above the
surface of the water or ice when seeking food; and several times he lost
sight of the flock, as it darted around a berg, or swung round the
circle of some secluded valley of the ice-field.

"H-r-r-r-r-huk! H-r-r-r-r-huk!" Their barbarous clamor, insufficiently
rendered in the foregoing, suddenly sounded close to leeward, and close
up against the light north-wester then blowing came the beautiful
quarry, their small, black heads and necks showing as glossy as a
raven's wing, in contrast with the asheous hue of their wings, and th