112 THE BARREN-GROUND CARIBOU 



or freezing bitterly steel-cold, you may know 

 what it is to draw up to your glowing log-fire or 

 lie snug in your deer-skin bag on your branch- 

 formed bed — if it be night — and feel altogether 

 glad that you have not to rise up and go out and 

 do battle with the elements. 



Meantime, in the northern latitude the seasons 

 were changing. 



By mid-September the leaves of the birch trees 

 had completely faded to tints of yellow and 

 yellow chrome, and many had fallen. Summer 

 birds had gone south, and their notes and cheep- 

 ings were gone from the woods which held but 

 the chatter of an odd red squirrel or the whistle 

 of a friendly jay. Evening crept down earlier 

 than hitherto. Night after night Northern Lights 

 be-ribboned the sky as they fleeted across the 

 zone from west to north-east (" The dance of the 

 spirits," the Indians call this beautiful pheno- 

 menon) ; and always, now, when the wind veered 

 to the north it had the bitter chill of snow in it. 



On September 16 there were snow showers ; 

 on the 24th snow, and wind, and rain. 



At the end of the month all leaves had fallen, 

 and I walked in a land of mourning, half-thinking 

 to step light-footed lest I disturbed the dead in 

 a vast, deserted hall where even the evergreen 

 spruce and pine frowned down on me darkly. 



Those were days of brooding grey skies — days of 

 frost and biting wind: days of repentance and thaw. 



With October came freeze-up and snow, while 

 Snow Buntings were about the wood-bottoms and 

 lake-shores, and passing on south in migration. 

 On October 2 the thermometer dropped sharply 



