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There were places, in canyon- and pocket-drifts, where they crossed snow hundreds of feet deep, and they crossed tiny glaciers, in drafty rifts, wind-scurried and bare of any snow. They crept like silent wraiths across the faces of impending avalanches, or roused from exhausted sleep to the thunder of them.

I could think of a few things, but I did not mention them, for her first words recalled some scenes of my early life on a backwoods farm: the log cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the latch-string, the wide-mouthed stone-and-stick chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, the smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree log, the ladder to the loft where I slept, and where the snows would drift on the floor through the rifts in the split clapboards that roofed me over.

I paused for some time and watched the fish hawks, or ospreys, of which there were nearly a dozen sailing about above the junction of the two streams, squealing and diving, and occasionally striking a fish on the rifts. I am convinced that the fish hawk sometimes feeds on the wing. I saw him do it on this and on another occasion.

He never suspected that this was Adah's business, and he answered frankly: "No, that's about played out. Madam turned the last one out doors." "Turned her out doors?" and Adah's face was as white as the snow rifts they were passing. The driver felt that he had gossiped too much, and relapsed into silence, while Adah, in a paroxysm of terror, sat with clasped hands and closed eyes.

The view that the canals of Mars are vast rifts due to the cooling of the globe, is recommended by the circumstance that they tend to follow great circles; nevertheless, it would break down if, as Schiaparelli holds, the fluctuations in their visibility depend upon actual obliterations and re-emergencies.

He thought you done for, no doubt, and so fell back on certainty, as one may say. It is a marvel you escaped the great rifts in yon cliffs in the storm. Now he will hear that you are none the worse, and he will be sorry he paid me." Thorgils laughed grimly, but Nona sighed at the downfall of the man she had liked. As for myself, it mattered little what became of him, so far as I was concerned.

Here and there were rifts or openings through which the light passed; under such places the grass was fine and green, or the wild hyacinths in due season tinged the earth with blue.

Inch by inch he traced the obscure passage, seeking to impress each faint detail upon his memory that narrow ledge within easy reach of an upstretched arm, the sharp outcropping of rock-edges here and there, the deep gash as though some giant axe had cleaved the stone, those sturdy cedars growing straight out over the chasm like the bowsprits of ships, while all along the way, irregular and ragged, varied rifts not entirely unlike the steps of a crazy staircase.

They picked their way very slowly through the opening rifts along the shore, made the Company's post at Fort William in eleven days, exchanged their large canoes for smaller craft, and paddled and portaged through the endless network of river and lake to Fort Garry, which they reached on June 10, thirty-eight days out from Montreal.

There were rifts in the dark clouds, and the air was growing moist. The morning light brought with it rain. The sea gradually grew less and less troubled, and the little vessel rolled and pitched more easily. The Captain was suddenly startled from his reverie by the increasing rays of the rising sun, who was now beginning to show his golden circle above the horizon.