ON A GLASS ROOF 129 



cotash-pot just as it came from the hand of the 

 Waubanakee squaw that fashioned it, or with the 

 smutch of camp-fire smoke upon it, I should prize 

 it above all the old china in the world. But I was 

 bom too late for such a gift, and get only shards. 



As I skirted the rugged, silent shore, walking 

 where last summer I boated, there were traces 

 enough of the fierce fight that had raged before the 

 cold subdued the lake and got it safe under hatches. 

 All the nearest rocks and trees were mantled with 

 ice, the spray of the last waves hurled ashore by 

 the north wind, and twenty rods lakeward was a 

 line of broken cakes, frozen into a jagged barricade, 

 where the open water made its last stand. All 's 

 quiet now along Petowbowk, and King Frost 

 reigns supreme and majestic. But the captive 

 begins to groan as the sun, his deliverer, climbs 

 upward and northward. Two months hence he will 

 be playing tyrant in his turn, buffeting craft, water- 

 fowl, and shores. 



Beyond the first grim headland that clasps the 

 bay, I saw some steadfast, upright specks, which 

 I took to be fishermen, and, having faith that they 

 knew better than I where to fish, made my way 

 toward them. Coming nearer, some of the specks 

 proved to be men, while other bigger ones turned 

 out to be young evergreen trees set in the ice — 

 better than the men, likely enough, if they had 

 been left growing, but now only brush-heaps to 



