oon
found out. It sometimes seemed as if he slipped back two feet for every
one he gained. He tried taking off the shoes, only to find that in
sheltered places he broke through and was worse off than on the slipping
shoes. But he was grimly resolved that he would get to the top of the
ridge, cost him what it might. It was characteristic of the boy that
what he set out to do he did. So he ground his teeth and kept at it,
slipping, scrambling, pulling himself up by brush and trees. After a
little he discovered that by zigzagging back and forth along the face
of the slope and taking advantage of every little inequality he could
make fairly good progress.

Still it took an hour and a half of strenuous work to gain the coveted
top of the ridge, and he was thoroughly winded and weary, to say nothing
of sundry bruises and scratches from frequent falls. Panting and
perspiring he turned to look back. Below him lay Smugglers' Hollow, but
how different from the Hollow into which he had gazed for the first time
in September! It was not less lonely or less wild. In fact if anything
these features were accentuated. The mountains which seemed to enclose
it on all sides were no less heroically grand and rugged, but they had
been robbed in a measure of their forbidding, somber gloom by the
transforming mantle of snow. The heavy stand of spruce on the opposite
mountain no longer cloaked it with the shadows of night like a perpetual
threat of evil. Each tree was a pyramid of myriad gems flashing in the
sun.

He could trace the course of the frozen brook through the heart of the
Hollow, a ribbon of white, smooth and unbroken, between the fringe of
alders on either side. He could see the cabin, or rather the roof and
eaves, for the cabin itself was nearly buried in a drift. From the
chimney a thin pencil of blue smoke rose straight up in the still air.
It was the one thing needed. It in no way marred the grandeur of the
scene, but it saved it from utter desolation. Something of this sort
flitted vaguely through Upton's mind. Then he heard the faint crack of a
rifle on the opposite side of the Hollow, followed by two more cracks.
The smoke and the sound of the rifle removed the last vestige of
temporary depression which the grandeur of the scene and the utter
silence of the vast solitude had tended to produce.

"Hal's got into a bunch of 'em or else his shooting eye is off," he
chuckled and turned to scan the ridge he was on to the west.