toiled at his declensions and conjugations, or translated the Pater
Noster into blundering Algonquin. The water in the cask beside the fire
froze nightly, and the ice was broken every morning with hatchets.
The blankets of the two priests were fringed with the icicles of their
congealed breath, and the frost lay in a thick coating on the lozenge-
shaped glass of their cells. [ Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 14, 15. ]

By day, Le Jeune and his companion practised with snow-shoes, with all
the mishaps which attend beginners,--the trippings, the falls, and
headlong dives into the soft drifts, amid the laughter of the Indians.
Their seclusion was by no means a solitude. Bands of Montagnais, with
their sledges and dogs, often passed the mission-house on their way to
hunt the moose. They once invited De Noue to go with them; and he,
scarcely less eager than Le Jeune to learn their language, readily
consented. In two or three weeks he appeared, sick, famished, and half
dead with exhaustion. "Not ten priests in a hundred," writes Le Jeune to
his Superior, "could bear this winter life with the savages." But what
of that? It was not for them to falter. They were but instruments in
the hands of God, to be used, broken, and thrown aside, if such should be
His will.

[ "Voila, mon Reuerend Pere, vn eschantillon de ce qu'il faut souffrir
courant apres les Sauuages. . . . Il faut prendre sa vie, et tout ce
qu'on a, et le ietter a l'abandon, pour ainsi dire, se contentant d'vne
croix bien grosse et bien pesante pour toute richesse. Il est bien vray
que Dieu ne se laisse point vaincre, et que plus on quitte, plus on
trouue: plus on perd, plus on gaigne: mais Dieu se cache par fois,
et alors le Calice est bien amer."--Le Jeune, Relation 1633, 19. ]

An Indian made Le Jeune a present of two small children, greatly to the