noon
`` To Lorette , Paul ? '' But Paul condescended only a grunt and whisked suddenly round a headland up a narrow gorge , which seemed to lead to the very heart of the mountains and might have sheltered any number of fugitives . In the gorge we stopped to take a light meal of gingerbread horses -- a cake that is the peculiar glory of the _ habitant _ -- dried herrings and sea biscuits . By the sun , I knew it was long past noon and that we had been traveling northwest . I also vaguely guessed that Paul 's object was to intercept the North-West trappers , if they had planned to slip away from the St. Lawrence through the bush to the Upper Ottawa , where they could meet north-bound boats . But not one syllable had my taciturn guide uttered . Clambering up the steep , snowy banks of the gorge , we found ourselves in the upper reaches of a mountain , where the trees fell away in scraggy clumps and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the hill-crest .