arduous toil. A winter
in that latitude, where the mercury often falls to 20 degrees and even
30 degrees below zero, can only be successfully encountered after
elaborate preparation, and the little company who now found themselves
stranded on the verge of that vast northern forest, had everything to
do, with but slight means and scanty time. The followers of Mahng had
abandoned many things in their hasty flight which now proved of the
utmost value, and a welcome addition to the limited outfit of Donald
and Atoka. Among these things were several blankets, an axe, and a few
rude cooking-utensils.

These they removed to the spot selected for their winter home, about a
mile from the river on the bank of a small stream that flowed into it
and near by a pond formed by an old and very large beaver dam. Here,
before night of that first day, a snug hut of bark was erected for
Ah-mo's accommodation, and from here the young men set forth the next
morning on the busiest season of hunting and trapping in which either
of them had ever engaged. Everything that wore fur or feathers and
could furnish meat to be smoked or dried for future use was eagerly
sought. Their success was phenomenal. Deer, bear, turkeys, and geese
fell before their rifles, while their traps, in the construction of
which Atoka was a past-master, yielded beaver, otter, muskrat, and
raccoons.

Within a month they had collected such a quantity of meat and skins as
assured them against both hunger and cold between then and spring. Now
they turned their attention to a house, and, with only their ready axes
for tools, they had one finished two weeks later that they surveyed
with genuine pleasure and pardonable pride. It was of logs, notched
and fitted together at the corners, twelve feet square and with walls
six feet high. It was chinked with moss, had a tight floor of hewed
cedar planks, a roof of hemlock bark, a chimney and fireplace of stones
cemented with blue clay and sand, two small windows covered with
scraped and tightly stretched intestines taken from a deer, and a stout
door hung on wooden hinges.

The hut was hardly ready for occupancy before the winter storms set in
and the whole forest world was buried in snow. Still the inmates of
"Castle Beaver," as Donald named their cosy dwelling, were by no means
idle nor did an hour of time hang heavily on their hands for lack of
occupation. Ah-mo had gathered an immense supply of flags and sedge
gra