The fur trade is lively, the winter is bitter cold, and it's normal to slaughter animals in the basement. This is eastern Canada in the 1900's; welcome to a true winter and real hunters. The cold is cold enough to give burns, and because of this harsh weather, Alice Munro describes the coating of the animal's thick fur. In "Boys and Girls," where there is luscious fur to be found, there is a fur trader …showed first 75 words of 410 total…

…showed last 75 words of 410 total…when the lights are out in the residence. The narrator and their brother feels this uninvited presence at night, and don't feel safe. Imaginations flourish, however, to keep their busy minds off the other possible dangers. The kids faced many terrors, especially "whenever a man escaped from the county jail, twenty miles away... he had somehow let himself in... and was hiding behind the linoleum." No place was safe at night, except the beds themselves.