ew hard and his eyes bright. He knew it
was no longer a snow-squall, but a lasting storm. He stopped; the boys
tumbled against him. He looked at them with a strange smile.

"Hev you two made up?" he said.

"No--o!"

"Make up, then."

"What?"

"Shake hands."

They clasped each other's red, benumbed fingers and laughed, albeit a
little frightened at Julian. "Go on!" he said, curtly.

They went on dazedly, stupidly, for another hour.

Suddenly Provy Smith's keen eyes sparkled. He pointed to a singular
irregular mound of snow before them, plainly seen above the dreary
level. Julian ran to it with a cry, and began wildly digging. "I knew I
hit him," he cried, as he brushed the snow from a huge and hairy leg.
It was the bear--dead, but not yet cold. He had succumbed with his huge
back to the blast, the snow piling a bulwark behind him, where it had
slowly roofed him in. The half-frozen lads threw themselves fearlessly
against his furry coat and crept between his legs, nestling themselves
beneath his still warm body with screams of joy. The snow they had
thrown back increased the bulwark, and drifting over it, in a few
moments inclosed them in a thin shell of snow. Thoroughly exhausted,
after a few grunts of satisfaction, a deep sleep fell upon them, from
which they were awakened only by the pangs of hunger. Alas! their
dinners--the school dinners--had been left on the inglorious
battlefield. Nevertheless, they talked of eating the bear if it came to
the worst. They would have tried it even then, but they were far above
the belt of timber; they had matches--what boy has not?--but no WOOD.
Still, they were reassured, and even delighted, with this prospect, and
so fell asleep again, stewing with the dead bear in the half-impervious
snow, and woke up in the morning ravenous, yet to see the sun shining in
their faces through the melted snow, and for Jackson Tribbs to quickly
discover, four miles away as the crow flies, the cabin of his father
among the flaming sumacs.

They started up in the glare of the sun, which at first almost blinded
them. They then discovered that they were in a depression of the
table-land that sloped before them to a deep gully in the mountainside,
which again dropped into the canyon below. The trail they had lost, they
now remembered, must be near this edge. But it was still hidden, and
in seeking it there was danger of some fatal misstep in the treacherous
snow. Nevertheless, they sallied out