“Ho! La Roche!”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Here, take my coat and shake the snow off it, and let’s have supper as speedily as may be. The draughts without, Frank, are a little too powerful for the draughts within, I fear.—What, wife, making another coat? One would think you had vowed to show your affection for me by the number of coats you made. How many have you perpetrated since we were married?”
“Never mind; go and put on one now, and come to supper while it is hot.”
“I’m glad it is hot,” cried Stanley from his bedroom. “One needs unusual heat within to make up for the cold without. The thermometer is thirty below.”
While the party in the hall were enjoying their evening meal, the men were similarly employed beside the stove in their own habitation. There was not much difference in the two apartments, save that the confusion in that of the men was much greater, in consequence of the miscellaneous mass of capotes, caps, belts, discarded moccasins, axes, guns, and seal-spears, with which they saw fit to garnish the walls. The fumes of tobacco were also more dense, and the conversation more uproarious.
“’Tis a howlin’ night,” observed Massan, as a gust of more than usual violence shook the door on its hinges.
“Me t’ink de snow-drift am as t’ick in de sky as on de ground,” said Oolibuck, drawing a live coal from the fire and lighting his pipe therewith.
“Hould on, boys!” cried Bryan, seizing his chair with both hands, half in jest and half in earnest, as another blast shook the building to its foundation.
The two Indians sat like statues of bronze, smoking their calumets in silence, while Gaspard and Prince rose and went to the window. But the frozen moisture on the panes effectually prevented their seeing out.