electricity.




ON THE NORTHERN ICE


THE winter nights up at Sault Ste.
Marie are as white and luminous as
the Milky Way. The silence which
rests upon the solitude appears to
be white also. Even sound has been included
in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the
still white frost, all things seem to be oblit-
erated. The stars have a poignant brightness,
but they belong to heaven and not to earth,
and between their immeasurable height and
the still ice rolls the ebon ether in vast, liquid
billows.

In such a place it is difficult to believe that
the world is actually peopled. It seems as if
it might be the dark of the day after Cain
killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's re-
mainder was huddled in affright away from
the awful spaciousness of Creation.

The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for
Echo Bay -- bent on a pleasant duty -- he