The next morning Dolly said: "There's no sugar, Goosie."
"Coffee is better without sugar," said Charles-Norton, sententiously.
For a few days the young couple, with wry faces, drank unsweetened coffee. Then this difficulty disappeared. Taking up the tin before breakfast, Dolly discovered that there was no more coffee.
The last of the canned fruit followed, and the last slice of bacon.
"Thank the Lord we can live on trout," said Charles-Norton, piously.
As if in answer, the next morning, the trout refused to take his bait of red flannel.
Alone there on the shore of the lake, while Dolly waited within the cabin, Charles-Norton passed a bad quarter-of-an-hour. Then he went up the slopes back of the meadow and captured a handful of grasshoppers springing there in the rising sun. The trout took them with gratitude. "Whee!" said Charles-Norton, when at last he had his catch.
And then, to a cold blast from the East, a few days later, the grasshoppers all disappeared. Charles-Norton took his axe, went into the woods, and chopping open mouldy logs, obtained a store of white grub. The trout took them.
But Fatality now was dogging him close. When, with tingling skin, he opened the cabin-door a few mornings later, a cry escaped him. A snow-carpet spread from the crest over the face of the whole visible world, clear down to the western plain. It covered deep the meadow, hung in miniature mountain-chains on the boughs of the pines, filigreed the lake. The lake was frozen.