them also put fur flaps on their raccoon-skin
caps, and Shif'less Sol even managed to fashion an imitation of gloves out
of deerskin.

"I wouldn't advise you to try to use your hands much with these gloves
on," he said; "leastways, not to shoot at anything till you took 'em off;
but I do say that so long ez your hands are idle, they'll be pow'ful
warmin' to the fingers."

"We don't have to go out very much just now," said Paul, "and if we only
had two or three books here, we could pass the time very pleasantly."

"That's so," said Shif'less Sol musingly. "You an' me, Paul, wuz intended
to be eddicated men. Ez fur Jim Hart here, he's that dull he'd take more
pride in cookin' in a stone furnace than in writin' the finest book in the
world."

"When I cook I git's somethin' that I kin see," said Jim Hart. "I never
read but one book in my life, an' I didn't find it very sustainin'. I
guess if you wuz starvin' to death here in the wilderness, you'd ruther
hev a hot hoe cake than all the books in the world."

"'Tain't worth while, Paul, to talk to Jim Hart," said Shif'less Sol
sadly. "He ain't got no soul above a hoe cake. I've allus told you, Paul,
that you an' me wuz superior to our surroundings. Ef Jim Hart wuz locked
up in a schoolhouse all his life he'd never be an eddicated man, while ez
fur me, I'm one without ever gittin' a chance, jest because it's in my
natur'."

Paul laughed at them both, and drew a little closer to the bed of red
coals. The warmth within and the cold without appealed to all the elements
of his vivid and imaginative nature. Not for worlds would he have missed
being on this great adventure with these daring men.

"I'm a-thinkin'," said Ross, as he lifted the buffalo robe over their door
and looked out, "that ez soon ez the wind dies the lake will freeze over."

"An' it will be harder than ever then," said Paul, "to catch fish."

"I guess we kin do about ez well through holes in the ice," said Ross.

Ross's prediction soon came true. When they awoke on the morning two days
afterwards the lake curved about them in a white and glittering sheet,
reflecting back a brilliant sun in a million dazzling rays.

"I'm glad all of our party are here on the island together," said Henry,
"because the ice isn't thick enough to support a man's weight, and it
isn't thin enough to let a canoe be pushed through it. We're clean cut off
from the world for a little while."

"An' this is whar poor old Long Jim