Sintamaskin 



the winter sky — skin-clad and with black 

 wings upon their heads. 



Then the ground lifted again, the birches 

 and moosewood reappeared, the forest was 

 more open and more varied, the ground rough 

 and broken. And so, now on rocky hard- 

 wood ridges, again through sombre swamps of 

 evergreens, went our way, nearly three miles 

 in all, until at last a sudden downward slope 

 brought us to the border of a little lake. We 

 crossed first this, and next a narrow strip of 

 spruce-grown land, and we had reached Lac 

 Clair. 



This is a large, open lake, with fine woods 

 about it, and some picturesque low cliffs along 

 its eastern shore, but not on the whole a very 

 interesting spot. We crossed it in a north- 

 easterly direction, two miles, carefully scan- 

 ning its unbroken white stretch for signs of 

 game. We found nothing but the record of a 

 little woodland tragedy : the footprints of a 

 hare bound across the lake, at first near to- 

 gether, then suddenly far apart as he had 

 leaped for his life ; approaching, at an angle, 

 other tracks, those of a marten ; then the two 

 mingled, a disturbed place in the snow, drops 



of blood ; and last, the tracks of the marten 



141 



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