I know now--though I would not have confessed it at the time--that mixed with admiration of salt pork was a growing dread that in time, if no change offered itself, I should tire of that diet. I began to feel it sticking to me more like an Old Man of the Sea than a brother. The woodland atmosphere began to taste of it. When I came in-doors it seemed to me that the log shanty was gradually turning into fried salt pork. I could not say that I knew how it felt to eat quail a day for thirty days. One man cannot know everything. But I felt that I was learning. One day the cook put his hat on, and took his axe, and started out of the shanty door with an unwonted air of business. "Been goin' fish," said he, in broken Indian. "Good job if get trout." A good job? Why the thought was like a floating spar to a sailor overboard! I went with him. It was a cold day, but I was dressed in Canadian style--the style of a country where every one puts on everything he owns: all his stockings at once, all his flannel shirts and drawers, all his coats on top of one another, and when there is nothing else left, draws over it all a blanket suit, a pair of moccasins, a tuque, and whatever pairs of gloves he happens to be able to find or borrow. One gets a queer feeling with so many clothes on. They seem to separate you from yourself, and the person you feel inside your clothing might easily be mistaken for another individual. But you are warm, and that's the main thing. [Illustration: TROUT-FISHING THROUGH THE ICE] I rolled along the trail behind the Indian, through the deathly stillness of the snow-choked forest, and presently, from a knoll and through an opening, we saw a great woodland lake. As it lay beneath its unspotted quilt of snow, edged all around with balsam, and pine and other evergreens, it looked as though some mighty hand had squeezed a colossal tube of white paint into a tremendous emerald bowl. Never had I seen nature so perfectly unalloyed, so exquisitely pure and peaceful, so irresistibly beautiful. I think I should have hesitated to print my ham-like moccasin upon that virgin sheet had I been the guide, but "Brossy," the cook, stalked ahead, making the powdery flakes fly before and behind him, and I followed. Our tracks were white, and quickly faded from view behind us; and, moreover, we passed the signs of a fox and a deer that had crossed during the night, so that our profanation of the scene was neither serious nor exclusive.