Once more wintry blasts blew up the valley, the ground was covered with snow, and lakes and streams were frozen over. We had plenty of occupation, both indoors and out, and although the days were short, the moon for nearly half the month afforded us light sufficient to move about with as great ease as in summer. Habited in dresses of fur, we hunted often at considerable distances from home, either bison or deer, or smaller animals. On such occasions we built a shanty in some sheltered wood, of birch bark, when it was to be procured, or boughs stuck into the ground close together, with a thick mass of snow piled up against them, while a cheerful fire blazed in front. Very frequently, however, we dispensed with any shelter beyond such as the wood afforded, and, wrapt in our blankets, lay down to sleep on the snow, canopied by the starry vault of heaven. Uncle Denis and I were out on one of these hunting expeditions, when, as we were following the tracks of a deer through a wood, accompanied by Boxer and Toby, my uncle, who was ahead, made a sign to me to advance cautiously, while he, stopping, concealed himself behind a tree. I crept forward as he desired, not knowing whether he had sighted a deer or a party of Indians on the war-path. On getting up to him, I found that he was observing the movements of two animals, very different in appearance to each other. On the trunk of a fallen tree, stood a porcupine, or urson, with quills erect, looking down on a smaller animal, which I at once recognised as a marten, or rather, a sable, which was gazing up in a defiant way, apparently meditating an attack on the other. "I should like to catch and tame both those animals," whispered Uncle Denis. "Keep back the dogs or the sable will escape and the urson will treat them in a way they are not likely to forget." The sable was evidently bent on having some porcupine meat for breakfast, and kept moving backwards and forwards, meditating a spring at the nose of its formidable antagonist; but, aware of the power of the latter's tail, was waiting for a favourable opportunity to seize it. The porcupine, though so much larger, and naturally moving only at a slow pace, seemed aware of the superior agility of the sable, which would enable it to spring from side to side, or dash forward and attack it in front, when its armed tail would have been of no avail. Presently the sable retired to a distance, and I thought would have discovered us, but at that moment it made a dash at the nose of the porcupine, who, whisking round its tail in an extraordinary fashion, sent a shower of darts into the body of its opponent. This did not, however, prevent the latter from seizing it with its sharp teeth and dragging it to the ground.