'That was a declaration of independence which must have been very sensibly felt in Sheffield,' remarked Robert.
They worked hard till dinner, at which period they found Arthur limping about the shanty.
'I practised those villainous snow-shoes for several hours, till I walked beautifully; but see what I've got by it,' he said: 'a pain across the instep as if the bones would split.'
'Oh, just a touch of _mal de raquette_,' observed Sam Holt, rather unsympathizingly. 'I ought to have warned you not to walk too much in them at first.'
'And is there no cure?' asked Arthur, somewhat sharply.
'Peter Logan would scarify your foot with a gun-flint, that is, if the pain were bad enough. Do you feel as if the bones were broken, and grinding together across the instep?'
But Arthur could not confess to his experiences being so bad as this. Only a touch of the _mal de raquette_, that was all. Just a-paying for his footing in snow-shoes.
Sam Holt had long fixed the first snow as the limit of his stay. He had built his colossal shoes in order to travel as far as Greenock on them, and there take the stage, which came once a week to that boundary of civilisation and the post.
Two or three days of the intensest frost intervened between the first snow and the Thursday on which the stage left Greenock. Cedar Pond was stricken dead--a solid gleaming sheet of stone from shore to shore. A hollow smothered gurgle far below was all that remained of the life of the streams; and nightly they shrank deeper, as the tremendous winter in the air forced upon them more ice, and yet more.
Notwithstanding the roaring fires kept up in the shanty chimney, the stinging cold of the night made itself felt through the unfinished walls. For want of boards, the necessary interior wainscoting had never been put up. The sight of the frozen pond suggested to Mr. Holt a plan for easily obtaining them. It was to construct an ice-boat, such as he had seen used by the Indians: to go down to the 'Corner' on skates, lade the ice-boat with planks, and drive it before them back again.
Arthur, who hailed with delight any variety from the continual chopping, entered into the scheme with ardour. Robert would have liked it well enough, but he knew that two persons were quite sufficient for the business; he rather connived at the younger brother's holidays; he must abide by the axe.