already whitened ground, and the rising wind, even in their mountain-hemmed nook, was whirling in fierce and fitful eddies about their camp, and shrilly piping among the strained branches of the vexed forest around; while its loud and awful roar, as it careered along the sides of the distant mountains, told with what strength and fury the storm was commencing over the country at large. In the situation in which the company now found themselves, neither sleep, comfort, nor quiet were to be expected for the remainder of the night. They therefore piled high the wood on their fire, and gathered round the hot blaze, to protect them from the cold, that had now not only grown more intense, but become doubly difficult to withstand, from the force with which it was brought by the driving blasts in contact with their shivering persons. And thus,--in alternately turning their backs and fronts to the fire, while standing in one place, and often shifting places from one side of the fire to the other; in now taking refuge within their camp when the constantly veering gusts bore the smoke and flame outward, and then fleeing out of it when the stifling column was driven inward; but finding no peace nor rest anywhere, among those shifts and commotions of the battling elements,--they wore away the long and comfortless hours of that dreary night, till the return of morning light, which, after many a vain prayer for its speedier appearance, at length gradually broke over the storm-invested wilderness. As soon as it was light enough to see objects abroad, or see them as well as they can ever be discerned through the fast-falling snow of such a driving storm, Phillips and Carvil sallied out through the snow, already eight inches deep, and made their way down to the nearest shore of the lake, about a quarter of a mile distant, to ascertain the condition of the water before embarking upon it in their canoes, as they had designed to do immediately after breakfast. On reaching the shore, they found the narrow bay, before mentioned as forming the estuary of the two rivers on which they had been located, comparatively calm, though filled with congealing snow and floating ice from the rivers. But all beyond the line of the two points of land inclosing the bay was rolling and tumbling in wild commotion, madly lashing the rocky headlands with the foaming waters, and resounding abroad over the hills with the deep, hoarse roar of the tempest-beaten breakers of the ocean. "Do you see and hear that?" exclaimed Phillips, pointing to the lake. "Yes, yes; but what was that I just caught a glimpse of, out there in the offing, to the right?" hastily cried Carvil. They both peered forward intently; and the next moment they saw a canoe, containing a single rower, low bending to his oar, shoot by the northern headland with the speed of an arrow, strike obliquely out of the white line of rolling waves into the bay, and make towards the point where they stood.