d spray by weather-boards, which left open a
small well, capable of seating four persons. Four movable boards,
fastened by metal hooks, raised the sides of the well to a height of
nearly three feet, and a fifth board over the top formed a complete
housing to the whole fabric. La Salle and Kennedy swung the boat until
her bow pointed due east, leaving her broadsides bearing north and
south; and then, excavating a deeper furrow in the hollow between two
hummocks, the boat was slid into her berth, and the broken masses of icy
snow piled against and over her, until nothing but her covering-board
was visible.

A huge pile of decoys stood near, of which about two dozen were of wood,
such as the Micmac Indian whittles out with his curved _waghon_, or
single-handed draw-knife, in the long winter evenings. He has little
cash to spend for paint, and less skill in its use, but scorches the
smooth, rounded blocks to the proper shade of grayish brown, and, with a
little lampblack and white lead, using his fore-finger in lieu of a
brush, manages to imitate the dusky head and neck with its snowy ring,
and the white feathers of breast and tail.

These rude imitations, with some more artistic ones, painted in profile
on sheet-iron shapes, of life-size, and a few cork-and-canvas
"floaters," were quickly placed in a long line heading to the wind,
which was north-west, and tailing down around the boat, the southernmost
"stools" being scarce half a gun-shot from the stands.

By the time these arrangements were completed it was nearly midday, and
the sky, so clear in the morning, had become clouded and threatening.
The chilly north-west breeze, which had made the shelter of their boats
very desirable, had died away, and a calm, broken only by variable puffs
of wind, succeeded.

"We shall have rain or snow to-night," remarked La Salle to Kennedy,
who, after a few moments of watching, had curled himself down in the dry
straw, and begun to peruse a copy of the Daily Tribune, his inseparable
companion.

"Yes, I dare say. Greeley says--"

What Greeley said was never known, for at that moment a distant sound
rung like a trumpet-call on the ear of La Salle, and amid the gathering
vapors of the leaden eastern sky, his quick eye marked the wedge-like
phalanx of the distant geese, whose leader had already marked the long
lines of decoys, which promised so much of needed rest and welcome
companionship, but concealed in their treacherous array no