The Half Way House 
climate and the same lack of proper nourish- 
ment had produced the same result. They 
went to bed in the attic, where the men slept 
on the floor, but the girls stowed themselves 
in a small room wherein was a wide bed. 
Early in the morning we were wakened by 
the berry-pickers getting up. We wished we 
could understand their speech and know what 
it was they talked to one another about. What 
is there to talk about, we should like to know, 
where there is no daily paper, no fashions, no 
new books, nor opera ? How can they even 
get material enough to make gossip about 
their neighbours ? 
The road to Neils Harbour is stony and 
downhill and there is not much to be seen 
from it. One of Cape North's never-failing 
brooks breaks through the mountains and 
tumbles into the harbour along the course of 
the road, though it is for the most part con- 
cealed by intervening vegetation. The harbour 
is but a little cove jutting into the land and 
making a summer haven for the fishing-fleet, 
but in winter it is packed full of ice, as is every 
cranny of this northern coast. It was over the 
ice of this harbour and around the ice of the 
267 
