To this end he had even provided himself with a small knapsack, and for once realized Kitty's ideal of his character.
"Don't go too far," said Gabriel, "for, although the cold has moderated, the barometer is falling fast, and there is every appearance of snow.
Take care you are not caught in one of our blizzards." "But YOU are all going on the lake to skate!" protested Uncle Sylvester.
"Yes; for the very reason that it may be our last chance; but should it snow we shall be nearer home than you may be." Nevertheless, when it came on to snow, as Gabriel had predicted, the skating party was by no means so near home as he had imagined.

A shrewd keenness and some stimulating electric condition of the atmosphere had tempted the young people far out on the lake, and they had ignored the first fall of fine grayish granulations that swept along the icy surface like little puffs of dust or smoke.

Then the fall grew thicker, the gray sky contracted, the hurrying flakes, dashed against them by a fierce northwester, were larger, heavier, and seemed an almost palpable force that held them back.

Their skates, already clogged with drift, were beginning to be useless.

The bare wind-swept spaces were becoming rarer; they could only stumble on blindly towards the nearest shore.