each two blocks to melt the points of contact, and in half an hour they had frozen into one solid lump.  I and a friend proceeded like this till the ice-walls were about four feet high, spaces being left for the door and windows.  As the blocks became too heavy to lift, we used great wads of snow in their stead, melting them with cold water and kneading them into shape with thick woollen gloves, and so the walls rose.  I wanted a snow roof; had we been mediaeval cathedral builders we might possibly have fashioned a groined and vaulted snow roof, with ice ribs, but being amateurs, our roof perpetually collapsed, so we finally roofed the hut with grooved-and-tongued boards, cutting a hole through them for the chimney.  We then built a brick fire-place, with mantelpiece complete, ending in an iron chimney.  The windows were our great triumph.  I filled large japanned tea-trays two inches deep with water and left them out to freeze.  Then we placed the trays in a hot bath and floated the sheets of ice off.  They broke time and time again, but after about the twentieth try we succeeded in producing two great sheets of transparent ice which were fitted into the window-spaces, and firmly cemented in place with wet snow.  Then the completed hut had to be furnished.  A carpenter in Ottawa made me a little dresser, a little table, and little chairs of plain deal; I bought some cooking utensils, some enamelled-iron tea-things and plates, and found in Ottawa some crude oleographs printed on oil-cloth and impervious to damp.  These were duly hung on the snow walls of the hut, and the little girls worked some red Turkey-twill curtains for the ice windows, and a frill for the mantelpiece in orthodox south of England cottage style.  The boys made a winding tunnel through the snow-drifts up to the door of the hut, and Nature did the rest, burying the hut in snow until its very existence was unsuspected by strangers, though it may be unusual to see clouds of wood-smoke issuing from an apparent snow-drift.  That little house stood for over three months; it afforded the utmost joy to its youthful occupiers, and I confess that I took a great paternal pride in it myself.  Really at night, with the red curtains drawn over the ice windows, with the pictures on its snow walls, a lamp alight and a roaring log fire blazing on the brick hearth, it was the most invitingly cosy little place.  It is true that with the heat the snow walls perspired freely, and the roof was apt to drip like a fat man in August, but it was considered tactful to ignore these details.  Here the children entertained their friends at tea-parties, and made hideous juvenile experiments in cookery; here, too, “Jerusalem the Golden” was prepared.  It was a simple operation; milk and honey were thoroughly mixed in a bowl, the bowl was put out to freeze, and the frozen mass dipped into hot water to loosen it; “Jerusalem the Golden” was then broken up small, and the toothsome chips eagerly devoured.  Those familiar with the hymn will at once understand the allusion.