"I wasn't even asleep." O'Shea gave a last suspicious look to the
outside.
"O'Shea," said Caius, "has--has Madame Le Maitre a daughter?"
The farmer turned round to him in astonishment. "Bless my heart alive,
no!"
The snow was only two or three inches deep when Caius walked home; it
was light as plucked swan's-down about his feet. Everywhere it was
falling slowly in small dry flakes. There was little wind to make eddies
in it. The waning moon had not yet risen, but the landscape, by reason
of its whiteness, glimmered just visible to the sight.
CHAPTER XII.
THE MAIDEN INVENTED.
The fishing-boats and small schooners were dragged high up on the beach.
The ice formed upon the bay that lay in the midst of the islands. The
carpet of snow grew more and more thick upon field and hill, and where
the dwarf firwoods grew so close that it could not pass between their
branches, it draped them, fold above fold, until one only saw the green
here and there standing out from the white garment.
In these days a small wooden sleigh was given to Caius, to which he
might harness his horse, and in which he might sit snug among oxskins if
he preferred that sort of travelling to riding. Madame Le Maitre still
rode, and Caius discarded his sleigh and rode also. Missing the warmth
of the skins, he was soon compelled by the cold to copy Robinson Crusoe
and make himself breeches and leggings of the hides.
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