12/15 The plain of the ice and the snowclad hills looked blue with cold--unutterably cold, and dead as lightless snow looks when the eye has grown accustomed to see it animated with light. He could not see where, beneath the snow, the land ended and the ice began; but it mattered little. He walked out on the white plain scanning the south-eastern hill-slope for the house toward which he intended to bend his steps. He was well out on the lake before he saw far enough round the first cliff to come in sight of the log house and its clearing, and no sooner did he see it than he heard his approach, although he was yet so far away, heralded by the barking of a dog. |