en raining, but it's clearing off cold, and by morning
there'll be a crust that'll hold a horse. Walt, you and Hal know where
the spring is, so you fellows make a path down to it. The rest of us
will shovel out the wood-pile and the storehouse."

"What's the storehouse? There wasn't anything of that kind last fall."
Hal was all eagerness.

"Just a bit of a log shack we put up to keep the meat and supplies in.
You'll see it when you get outside. Now, everybody to wor-r-rk!" Pat
flung the door open. A wall of snow faced them.

Alec produced a home-made wooden shovel and an old iron one. With these
he and Pat soon cleared a space in front of the cabin. Then the others,
armed with snow-shoes and an old slab, went to work with a will and soon
Smugglers' Hollow rang with the laughter and shouts of the merry crew.
It was not far to the spring, and the task of digging out and trampling
down a path was not difficult. When they finished Walter and Hal turned
for their first good look at the surroundings. It was a wilderness of
white broken only by the thin column of smoke from the cabin chimney,
and the figures of their comrades busy at the wood-pile and storehouse.
The cabin itself was nearly buried in snow, which was more than
half-way to the low eaves. It had drifted quite over the little shack
where Pat and Alec were at work. All tracks had been obliterated and for
a few minutes it was difficult for them to get their bearings, so
changed was the landscape. Then one by one they picked out the landmarks
they had learned to know so well in the fall, but which now were so
changed as to be hardly recognized.

They stood in silence, something very like awe stealing over them as the
grim beauty, combined with pitiless strength, of the majestic scene
impressed itself upon them.

"Just think of a man living here all alone for weeks at a time. That's
what I call nerve. I believe I'd go dippy in a week," murmured Hal
hardly above a whisper as if he were afraid to trust his voice in the
great solitude.

"And yet there is something fascinating about it. I can feel the call of
it myself," replied Upton. "I suppose when one gets used to it it isn't
so bad. It's--it's--well, I suppose it's what you would call elemental,
and there is something heroic about this battling with the very hills
and elements to wrest a living from them. Hello! Pat's calling us."

They hurried back to the cabin, where Pat promptly shoved a pail into
the hand