of 



was far off ; but it is coming, and to-night it feels 

 near and keen. And to-night there is no loafing about 

 the lodge. 



When this house is done, then the rains may de- 

 scend, and the floods come, but it will not fall. It is 

 built upon a tussock ; and a tussock, you will know, 

 who have ever grubbed at one, has hold on the bot- 

 tom of creation. The winter may descend, and the 

 boys, and foxes, come, and they will come, but not 

 before the walls are frozen, yet the house stands. 

 It is boy-proof, almost ; it is entirely rain-, cold-, and 

 fox-proof. Many a time I have hacked at its walls 

 with my axe when fishing through the ice, but I never 

 got in. I have often seen, too, where the fox has gone 

 round and round the house in the snow, and where, 

 at places, he has attempted to dig into the frozen 

 mortar ; but it was a foot thick, as hard as flint, and 

 utterly impossible for his pick and shovel. 



Yet strangely enough the house sometimes fails of 

 the very purpose for which it was erected. I said the 

 floods may come. So they may, ordinarily ; but along 

 in March when one comes as a freshet, it rises some- 

 times to the dome of the house, filling the single bed- 

 chamber and drowning the dwellers out. I remember 



4 



