f anew, or whether he
disguised himself at all, but he returned with the news that they had no
suspicion. The island was still sacred to the spirits--a place where they
dare not land. This was satisfying news to all, and they rested for a
while.

Three or four days after Henry's return a strong wind stripped the last
leaves from the trees. All the reds and yellows and browns were gone, and
the gusts whistled fiercely among the gray branches. The surface of the
lake was broken into cold waves, that chased each other until they died
away at the shore.

The next day heavy rolling clouds were drawn across the sky, and all the
world was somber and dark. Paul stood at the entrance to the hut, and now,
indeed, he was thankful that they had that shelter, and that they had furs
and skins to reinforce their clothing. As he looked, something cold and
wet came out of the sky and struck him upon the face. Another came, and
then another, and in a few moments the air was full of flakes whirled by
the wind.

"The first snow," said Paul.

"Yes," said Henry, "and let us pray for snows--many, hard, and deep. The
fiercer the winter the easier it will be to hold back the allied tribes."

It was not a heavy snow, but it gave an earnest of what might come. The
bare boughs were whipped about in the gale, and creaked dismally. The
ground was covered with white to the depth of about two inches, and dark,
rolling waves, looking very chill, chased one another across the lake. Jim
Hart and Paul had managed to build of stones, in one corner of their hut,
a rude oven or furnace, with an exterior vent. They had plastered the
stones together with mud, which hardened into a sort of cement, and in
this furnace they kindled a little fire. They did not dare to make it
large, because of the smoke, but they had enough coals to give out a warm
and pleasant glow.

All of them retreated for a while to the "mansion," as Paul rather proudly
called it, and Henry. Ross, and Shif'less Sol busied themselves with
making new and stout moccasins of deerskin, fastened with sinews and
lined with fur. Shif'less Sol was especially skillful at this work; in
fact, the shiftless one was a wonderfully handy man at any sort of task,
and with only his hunting knife, a wooden needle of his own manufacture,
and deer sinews, he actually made Paul a fur-lined hunting shirt, which
seemed to the boy's imaginative fancy about the finest garment ever worn
in the wilderness. All of