over yonder, about ten years ago. He went out
bar-huntin' one day, and Mr. Bar came along and chewed him up."

"Gracious! Then there must be pretty ugly customers in this vicinity,"
exclaimed Sam, with a shiver.

"Not so many as there used to be. After Tillard's death the boys over to
the Run organized a b'ar hunt, and we brought in six o' the critters.
Reckon thet scart the others--leas'wise no b'ars showed up fer a long
while after."

Out on Tillard's Pond a stiff breeze was blowing, and consequently their
progress was not as rapid as it had been, nor were any of them as warm
as formerly.

"We're going to have a cold first night, I can tell you that," said
Dick, and his prediction proved true. By the time the sun sank to rest
behind the mountain in the west it was "snapping cold," as Tom expressed
it. The wind increased until to go forward was almost impossible.

"I know a pretty good place to rest in," said the guide. "It isn't over
quarter of a mile from here. If we can make that we'll be all right till
mornin'."

John Barrow led the way, pulling one of the sleds, and the boys
followed. Poor Sam was getting winded and skated only with the greatest
of difficulty.

It was dark when they reached the location the guide had in mind--a
rocky wall on one side of the river. At one point there was a split in
the rocks. This was overgrown at the top with cedars and brushwood,
forming something of a cave, ten or twelve feet wide and twice as deep,
the bottom of which was of rock and fairly smooth.

"I camped here two winters ago," said John Barrow, as he called a halt.
"I laced up the cedars above and they formed a fust-rate roof."

"I guess they are pretty well laced still," observed Dick. "They seem to
hold the snow very well. But we won't dare to make a fire in there."

"We'll build a fire in front, in this hollow, Dick. That will throw a
good deal of hot air into the place, and if we wrap ourselves in our
blankets we'll be warm enough."

Everyone in the party was anxious to get out of the nipping wind, and
they lost no time in entering the "cave," as Sam called it. The entrance
was low, and by placing the two sleds in an upright position on either
side they left an opening not over a yard wide. Directly in front of
this the boys started a roaring fire, cutting down several dwarf cedars
for that purpose.

"I don't much like the looks o' the sky to-night," observed John Barrow,
after preparing one of the turk