With
their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail
up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and led into
a great silent wood, sheltered on every side by the encircling hills.
Here the tilts were built with double walls, filled in between with
leaves and moss, to help the little stoves that struggled bravely with
the terrible cold; and the roofs were covered over with poles and bark,
or with the brown sails that had once driven the fishing-boats out and
in on the wings of the gale. The high mountains on the west stood
between them and the icy winds that swept down over the sea from the
Labrador and the Arctic wastes; wood in abundance was at their doors,
and the trout-stream that sang all day long under its bridges of snow
and ice was always ready to brim their kettles out of its abundance.
So the new life began pleasantly enough; but as the winter wore away and
provisions grew scarce and game vanished from the coverts, they all felt
the fearful pinch of famine. Every morning now a confused circle of
tracks in the snow showed where the wild prowlers of the woods had come
and sniffed at the very doors of the tilts in their ravening hunger.
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