becomes the most vallyble uv us all,"
said Jim Hart. "It's a lucky thing that I've got a kind uv stove an'
buffalo meat an' venison an' other kinds uv game. I'm jest willin' to bet
that you four hulkin' fellers will want to lay aroun' an' eat all the
time."

"I wouldn't be surprised, Jim, if we didn't get hungry once in a while,"
said Henry, with a smile.

Two more days passed, and the ice on the lake neither melted nor grew
thicker, and they were as well shut in and others were as well shut out as
if they had been on a lone island in the Pacific Ocean. Once they saw a
thin column of smoke, only a faint blue spire very far away, which Henry
said rose from an Indian camp fire.

"It's several miles from here," he said, "and it's just chance that they
are there. They don't dream that we are here."

Nevertheless, they did not light the fire in their furnace again for two
days. Then, when the skies grew too dark and somber for a faint smoke to
show against its background, they kindled it up again, and once more
enjoyed warm food.

"Ef I jest had a little coffee, an' somethin' to b'il it in, I'd be
pow'ful happy," said Jim Hart. "I'd jest enjoy b'ilin' a gallon or two
apiece fur you fellers an' me."

"Wa'al, ez you ain't got any coffee an' you ain't got anythin' to b'il it
in, I reckon we'll hev to be jest ez happy without it," said Shif'less
Sol.

The night after this conversation Paul was awakened by a patter upon their
skin and thatch roof. It must have been two or three o'clock in the
morning, and he had been sleeping very comfortably. He lay on furs, and
the soft side of a buffalo robe was wrapped close about him. He could not
remember any time in his life when he felt snugger, and he wanted to go
back to sleep, but that patter upon the roof was insistent. He raised
himself up a little, and he heard along with the patter the breathing of
his four comrades. But it was pitch dark in the hut, and, rolling over to
the doorway, he pulled aside a few inches the stout buffalo hide that
covered it. Something hard and white struck him in the face and stung like
shot.

It was hailing, pouring hard and driven fiercely by the wind. Moreover, it
was bitterly cold, and Paul quickly shut down the buffalo flap, fastening
it tightly. "We're snowed in and hailed in, too," he murmured to himself.
Then he drew his buffalo robe around his body more closely than ever, and
went back to sleep. The next morning it rained on top of the