s wonder and charm. He was glad to
be there, he was glad that chance or Providence had led him to
this lovely valley. He felt no loneliness, no fear for the
future, he was content merely to breathe and feel the glory of it
permeate his being.

He picked up a pebble presently and threw it into the lake. It
sank with the sullen plunk that told unmistakably to the boy's
ears of great depths below. Once or twice he saw a fish leap up,
and it occurred to him that here was another food supply.

He suddenly pulled himself together with a jerk. He could not
sit there all day dreaming. He had come to find a winter home
for Albert and himself, and he had not yet found it. But he had
a plan from which he had been turned aside for a while by the
sight of the lake, and now he went back to carry it out.

There were two clefts opening into the mountains from his side of
the river, and he went into the first on the return path. It was
choked with pine and cedars and quickly ended against a mountain
wall, proving to be nothing but a very short canyon. There was
much outcropping of rock here, but nothing that would help toward
a shelter, and Dick went on to the second cleft.

This cleft, wider than the other, was the one down which the
considerable brook flowed, and the few yards or so of fertile
ground on either side of the stream produced a rank growth of
trees. They were so thick that the boy could see only a little
distance ahead, but he believed that this slip of a tributary
valley ran far back in the mountains, perhaps a dozen miles.

He picked his way about a mile and then came suddenly upon a
house. It stood in an alcove protected by rocks and trees, but
safe from snow slide. It was only a log hut of one room, with
the roof broken in and the door fallen from its hinges, but Dick
knew well enough the handiwork of the white man. As he
approached, some wild animal darted out of the open door and
crashed away among the undergrowth, but Dick knew that white
men had once lived there. It was equally evident that they had
long been gone.

It was a cabin of stout build, its thick logs fitted nicely
together, and the boards of the roof had been strong and well
laid. Many years must have passed to have caused so much
decay. Dick entered and was saluted by a strong, catlike odor.
Doubtless a mountain lion had been sleeping there, and this was
the tenant that he had heard crashing away among the undergrowth.
On one s