It was in the first grey hour of dawn that the train steamed into the station, which was the junction for Quebec, and passengers bound for the English settlements south of that city were obliged to change.

For a few minutes before the train stopped the Rexford family had been booted and spurred, so to speak, ready for the transfer.  Each young person was warmly buttoned up and tied into a warlike-looking muffler.  Each had several packages in charge.  A youth came in from the smoking-car and attached himself to them.  When the train had come to a standstill the little French conductor was energetic in helping them to descend.

The family was very large, and, moreover, it was lively; its members were as hard to count as chickens of a brood.  Sophia, holding the youngest child and the tickets, endeavoured to explain their number to the conductor.

“There are three children that go free,” she said.  “Then two little boys at half fare—­that makes one ticket.  Myself and three young ladies—­make five tickets; my brother and father and mother—­eight.”

The sharp Frenchman looked dubious.  “Three children free; two at half fare,” he repeated.  He was trying to see them all as he spoke.

Sophia repeated her count with terse severity.

“There was not another young lady?”

“Certainly not.”

And Sophia was not a woman to be trifled with, so he punched the tickets and went back into his car.

Wooden platforms, a station hotel built of wood, innumerable lines of black rails on which freight trains stood idle, the whole place shut in by a high wooden fence—­this was the prospect which met the eyes of the English travellers, and seen in the first struggling light of morning, in the bitter cold of a black frost, it was not a cheerful one.  The Rexford family, however, were not considering the prospect; they were intent only on finding the warm passenger-car of the train that was to take them the rest of their journey, and which they had been assured would be waiting here to receive them.

This train, however, was not immediately to be seen, and, in the meantime, the broad platform, which was dusted over with dry frost crystals, was the scene of varied activities.

From the baggage-car of the train they had left, a great number of boxes and bags, labelled “Rexford,” were being thrown down in a violent manner, which greatly distressed some of the girls and their father.

“Not that way.  That is not the way.  Don’t you know that is not the way boxes should be handled?” shouted Captain Rexford sternly, and then, seeing that no one paid the slightest attention to his words, he was fain to turn away from the cause of his agitation.  He took a brisk turn down the empty end of the platform, and stood there as a man might who felt that the many irritations of life were growing too much for his self-control.