morning, although it just looks like any other day. On any other day
the sun is just as bright, and the air just as keen. On other days
the snow is just as white, just as deep--two feet where the constant
tramping has levelled its crystalline beauty, ten, twelve, fifteen
there where a great soft cloud of drift reaches halfway up the side
of a small wooden house. On other days there is just as much blue in
the sky, in the smoke, in the shadows of the pines, and the shadows
of the icicles. On other days the house looks just as neat, just as
silent, just as poor. The clearing is small, the house is small, a
small terrier suns himself on a pile of wood, and the only large
object apparently in existence is the tall, broad-shouldered,
well-proportioned man who presently emerges from the wooden house.
His ear has just caught the sound of a bell. It is not a bad bell
for Muskoka, and it has a most curious effect on this white, cold
silent world of snow and blue shadows. The owner of the house, who
is also the builder of it, stands a few moments listening. There is
only the twitter of the snowbirds to listen to, then the bell; more
snowbirds, and then the bell again.

"It has quite a churchy sound," he remarks; "I never noticed how
churchy before, but it reminds me of some other bell. Ten years I
have read for them here, and I never noticed it before." More
twitter from the snowbirds and the bell again. Time for church,
although the functions of the lay-reader will be this day laid aside,
giving place to the more exacting ones of the _rector chori_. This
being Christmas day in the morning, it devolves upon one clergyman
to preach in four different places, if not literally at once, at
least on the same day.

"It isn't possible," thinks the tall man swinging along at a