^§e Sa^ of tS}t &<xnb 



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 



