The Magnetic North

8 ift ba no$ ein @nbc§en braufjen geBfieBen. . . . ONE of the curious results of what is called wild life, is a blessed release from many of the timidities that assail the easy liver in the centres of civilisation. Potts was the only one in the white camp who had doubts about the wisdom of having to do with the natives. However, the agreeable necessity of going to Pymeut to invite Nicholas to the Blow-out was not forced upon the Boy. They were still hard at it, four days after the Jesuit had gone his way, surrounding the Big Cabin with a false wall, that final and effectual barrier against Boreas ? finishing touch warranted to convert a cabin, so cold that it drove its inmates to drink, into a dwelling where practical people, without cracking a dreary joke, might fitly celebrate a House- Warming. In spite of the shortness of the days, Father Wills's suggestion was being carried out with a gratifying success. Already manifest were the advantages of the stockade, running at a foot's distance round the cabin to the height of the eaves, made of spruce saplings not even lopped of their short bushy branches, but planted close together, after burning the ground cleared of snow. A second visitation of mild weather, and a further two days' thaw, made the Colonel determine to fill in the space between the spruce stockade and the cabin with "burnt-out" soil closely packed down and well tramped in. It was generallyconceded, as the winter wore on, that to thi...