The pledge thus given, taking away from the A. & H. O. A. S. its principal reason for existing under that name, did not, however, put an end to its career. It simply altered its title and amended its ways, and continued to flourish as vigorously as before, with Charlie Draper as one of its most popular and active members. *LOST ON LAKE ST. LOUIS.* The great river St. Lawrence, as if not content with its ordinary ample breadth, a few miles above the city of Montreal spreads out into a wide sheet of water which is known as Lake St. Louis. Lake St. Louis is about twelve miles long by eight in width at its widest part, and being famous for its cool breezes, the people from the city go out there in throngs every summer, so that its shores are well populated as long as the thermometer keeps well above the seventy point. In winter, however, it is very different. Then Jack Frost has a confirmed habit of sending the mercury away down, down, down, not only below freezing-point, but below zero even; and the blue waters of the lake turn into a floor as hard as steel, over which the snows drift and pile up and scatter again in fantastic windrows, until the warm spring sunshine melts them into soggy slush, and a little later rends the solid floor itself asunder and sends it careering down the current in great jagged ice-floes. There is nothing undecided about a Canadian winter. The frost-king means business from the start, and for three long months keeps a tight grip upon the land. Some winters, of course, he is more tyrannical than others. The Ross boys, for instance, thought that he had never before in their experience been so unmerciful as during the season that the event happened about which I am now going to tell. Day after day for weeks at a time the thermometer would not get up to the zero mark at all, while it would at night drop as much as thirty points below it. "’Pon my word, this sort of weather isn’t fair at all," said Bob Ross, in an impatient tone, at the breakfast-table one morning. "A fellow can hardly stir out of doors without getting his nose or ears nipped. My nose was frost-bitten for the third time last night, and that’s a little too much of a good thing for me." "Right your are, Bob," chimed in Phil, his elder brother, from across the table. "My poor ears have been nipped nobody knows how often. I expect one of them will drop off some fine day." "It’s a keen winter, boys, no doubt," assented Mr. Ross. "I don’t remember many as sharp. But the longest winter has an end, and you’ll forget all about the cold the first warm day that comes." "That may be, father," answered Bob, "but I’d like a little mild weather right now if the weather-clerk has no objections. You know we’re going over to the church festival at Beauharnois to-morrow night; and an eight-mile tramp in this cold weather is not just what I’m hankering for—though I mean to go all the same."