Flames were already breaking out between the logs on the side nearest to which stood the stove. Smoke was pouring out of the tilt door in a cloud. The boys were dazed and bewildered with their sudden awakening, but the fire was already beyond control, and was so far advanced that any attempt to salvage their belongings would have proved fruitless and foolhardy.

The bitter cold of the April night quickly roused them to activity. David rescued their axes, which were sticking into a stump near the tilt door, and their toboggan which fortunately had not been laid against the tilt, as was customary, was drawn to a safe distance. Then, using the toboggan for a seat, they drew on their clothing, and stood impotently and silently watching the burning tilt.

“I’m glad we didn’t have any o’ th’ traps stowed in there,” remarked David presently.

“Our—our rifles are burned!” choked Andy.

“The rifles! I went and forgot un!” exclaimed David, in consternation. “I went and forgot un! I might’ve pitched un out with th’ sleepin’ bags!”

“What ever will we do without un?” asked Andy. “We can’t do any huntin’ now!”

“Our snowshoes!” broke in David. “We clean forgot our snowshoes! We could have saved un, too, if we’d only thought!”

The snowshoes had been hanging on a peg just outside the tilt door, for trappers do not take snowshoes into warm tilts, where the heat would injure the babish, or netting. Smoke issuing from the door had hidden them, and in the bewilderment following their escape the boys had quite forgotten them. Now, like the rifles, the snowshoes were in the ruins of the burning tilt, and destroyed.

This was indeed a sad loss. In the woods snow lay a dozen feet deep, and to move about without the assistance of snowshoes was quite impossible. The game which Andy had accumulated was in the ruins, save two partridges which had been left at the Halfway tilt, and there was no other food nearer than the Narrows. Deprived of their snowshoes they could neither visit their rabbit traps nor set new ones.

“How’ll we make out now?” asked Andy hopelessly. “We can’t travel without snowshoes.”

“Maybe the snow on the river ice is packed hard enough t’ bear us,” suggested David. “Leastways we’ll have t’ try un. We’ve got t’ get t’ th’ Narrows tilt, whatever.”

Silently they lashed their sleeping bags upon the toboggan and made preparations for a night journey to the Halfway tilt. They could not reconnoiter for a suitable place to build a temporary shelter in the soft snow of the woods, as Andy had done when he was alone. A step beyond the packed snow around the tilt, or the more or less packed path leading down to the lake, where they had a water hole in the ice, would plunge them to their armpits.

“I’ll haul th’ flatsled,” suggested David, tightening the lashings of the toboggan. “You go ahead, Andy, and pick out th’ path t’ th’ water hole. We can make un all right t’ th’ lake, and we keeps t’ th’ hard path.”

Fortunately it was starlight, and though one or the other now and again stepped off the path, and each time had a brief battle with the deep snow, they at length emerged upon the white expanse of Lake Namaycush. Here the wind had packed the snow so hard that, though they sank nearly to their knees at every step, walking was not unduly difficult until they reached the river bed.

“’Twon’t be so good travelin’ here as on th’ Lake,” said David. “But I’m thinkin’ we’ll make un.”

David’s prediction was correct. In every turn of the river were deep drifts through which they floundered. Sometimes it became necessary to push the toboggan over these difficult places, using it as a support, working their way foot by foot. Slow and exhausting as it was, they stuck to it with a will, but when day broke they had traveled less than a third of the distance to the Halfway tilt.

“I’m fair scrammed!” Andy at length declared. “I’ve got t’ rest. Can’t we put on a fire and ’bide here and rest a little while?”

“Aye,” agreed David. “’Tis wearisome work. We’ll put on a fire and rest, but we mustn’t ’bide here too long. We’ll have t’ reach th’ tilt before night.”

An hour’s rest, sitting on the toboggan before a cheerful fire in the lee of the river bank, revived them.

“If we only had our snowshoes, and a bit t’ eat!” said Andy, when David suggested that it was time to go. “I’m fair starved!”

“And so be I!” David declared. “’Tis a long time since supper last evenin’. We’ll have th’ partridges, whatever, when we gets t’ th’ Halfway tilt.”

“It seems like I never can stand un so long,” said Andy. “I’m weak for hunger.”

Andy was to learn in the days that followed, what real hunger is, but he was brave enough, and not given to complaint. It is well, sometimes, for all of us to be tried out by the test of experience. Only through experience can we learn the stuff we are made of, and only through deprivations of the comforts to which we are accustomed can we learn to appreciate the good things of life. Most of us are too prone to take things for granted, and to forget that what we have and enjoy are the gifts of a benign Providence.

Many times that day David and Andy declared they “could not walk another step,” but they pushed and floundered bravely on until, in the dusk of evening, they stumbled at last into the friendly shelter of the Halfway tilt.

They were almost too weary to build a fire, but hunger conquered weariness, and presently with a roaring fire in the stove, and one of the partridges boiling—for, famished as they were, David insisted that the other one must be reserved for breakfast—they felt more cheerful. Fortunately they had left some tea in the tilt, and while their supper of half a boiled partridge each and a cup of tea was far from satisfying their healthy young appetites, it refreshed them.

“I’m thinkin’,” remarked David, as they ate, “we’ve got a rare lot t’ be thankful for. Th’ good Lard woke me up just in time last night. If I’d slept a bit longer we’d both been smothered with th’ smoke and burned up.”

“’Twere lucky you wakes,” agreed Andy.

“I’m thinkin’ ’tweren’t luck, now,” protested David. “I’m thinkin’ th’ Lard were watchin’, and wakes us just th’ right time.”

“And maybe,” suggested Andy, in an awed voice, “’twere like we were sayin’. Maybe Mother was close by, watchin’, and maybe she asked th’ Lard to waken us.”

“Yes,” said David, “I been thinkin’ o’ that too. There’s no doubtin’ spirits walks about, and shows theirselves, too, sometimes. Uncle Hi Roper saw an Injun down t’ th’ Post one night paddlin’ a canoe around. He was an Injun that had been dead fifteen years, whatever. Uncle Hi knew he, and called to he, but th’ Injun didn’t answer because he were just a spirit. He kept on paddlin’ and paddlin’ in a circle, and never speakin’. It scared Uncle Hi, and he ran in and told Zeke Hodge, and Zeke comes out, but he couldn’t see th’ Injun then. He’d just disappeared.”

“Oh-h!” breathed Andy. “I’d been scared too! But I wouldn’t be scared at Mother’s spirit.”

“I’d—I’d be glad t’ see un,” said David.

But if their mother’s spirit came that night to look lovingly upon her two brave boys, they did not know it. They had rested but a short time the previous night, and, exhausted from their struggle of nearly twenty hours with the snow drifts, they quickly fell into sound and dreamless sleep.

It was long past daylight when they awoke, to the sound of shrieking wind, and when David looked out of the tilt door he was met by a cloud of driving snow.

“’Tis a wonderful nasty day,” he said.

“Is it too bad t’ travel?” asked Andy, anxiously.

“Aye,” said David regretfully. “We never could face un. We’ll have t’ bide here.”

“And we only has one pa’tridge t’ eat!” mourned Andy.

“Only one pa’tridge,” repeated David solemnly.

“Whatever will we do without eatin’?” asked Andy.

“We’ll have t’ make un do, whatever,” declared David. “They’s no other way.”

“I’m fair starved now,” said Andy. “All we had t’ eat th’ whole of yesterday was half a pa’tridge each.”

“We’ll make out with un. We’ve got tea,” cheered David. “And maybe th’ wind’ll pack th’ snow so th’ travelin’ll be better tomorrow—if th’ storm breaks. ’Tis like t’ be better from this on, anyhow, for th’ river’s wider.”

“If we eats th’ pa’tridge now,” Andy calculated, “we won’t have anything t’ eat to-night or in th’ marnin’!”

“Suppose,” David suggested, “we cooks half of un now, and just drinks th’ broth for breakfast, and keeps th’ meat for night. Then we’ll have th’ other half t’ eat in th’ marnin’ before we starts out.”

“I’m too hungry t’ be waitin’ like that,” objected Andy. “Let’s eat th’ meat now and th’ broth tonight, and keep th’ other half for marnin’!”

David’s hunger doubtless cast the deciding vote, for though reason told him the plan he had suggested was the wiser, his hunger got the better of his judgment. And they were still so hungry when the small portion had been disposed of that in the end they ate the broth as well.

It was a miserable day for the lads. No matter what they talked about their conversation always drifted back to food. They could not avoid it, for food was the thing uppermost in their minds.

A hundred times that day one or the other went out of doors into the storm in the hope that they might discover some sign of its abatement, always to be met by the smothering drift, and when they arose the following morning snow was still falling heavily, though the wind had lost much of its force. They ate the half partridge remaining, but it served only to whet their appetites.

“Th’ snow’s fallin’ thicker’n ever,” announced David, after an inspection late in the afternoon.

“It just seems like I can’t stand un, I’m so hungry!” declared Andy. “Suppose now we start tomorrow marnin’, whatever. I’m thinkin’ we might make un,” he added hopefully.

“We never could make un,” David objected. “We’d perish. We’ll have t’ ’bide here till th’ weather clears. I’m as famished as you be, Andy, b’y, but we’ll have t’ put up with un.”

“It seems like I’d just die o’ hunger!” mourned Andy.

“Sometimes men goes without eatin’ for a week,” consoled David, “and it don’t kill un if they don’t give up to un. There’ll be some way out. Pop says there’s a way out’n every fix if you sticks to it and don’t get scared or give up.”

“Aye,” said Andy, with new courage, “I were thinkin’ of that th’ time I were caught out above th’ big mesh, and then I makes a shelter and I’m all right.”

The thought consoled them both, and though still they talked of food, it was now in the manner of planning great feasts when they should reach home.

“We’ll have Margaret cook us a fine big mess o’ pork, and we’ll eat all we wants, with bread and molasses t’ go with un,” suggested David.

“Oh, but won’t that be eatin’ now!” enthused Andy. “And there’ll be plenty o’ trout, too, when we gets out, and salmon’ll be runnin’ th’ middle o’ July! I could eat half a salmon now if I had un!”

The wind had died out, though all that night the snow fell, but in mid-forenoon of the following day the clouds lightened, and shortly after noon the sun broke out, warm and brilliant.

“We can start now!” exclaimed Andy, “and we’ll make th’ narrows tilt before midnight, whatever, and have a good supper.”

“We can try un,” said David dubiously, “but I’m fearin’ we’ll find th’ fresh snow more than we can manage. There’s been no wind for a day t’ drive un off th’ ice, and yesterday and last night it snowed wonderful hard.”

David was correct. They had found the river bed badly clogged on their journey down from the Lake Namaycush tilt. Now it was vastly worse. They sank to their waists, the moment they attempted to leave the tilt, and finally, quite satisfied that travel was impossible, they retreated disconsolate and discouraged to the tilt.

“We’ll starve now,” said Andy, in a tone almost of resignation. “There’s no way out.”

“’Tis a wonderful bad fix,” David admitted.

“I’m growin’—wonderful weak—in th’ knees,” Andy confessed.

“I feels a weakness, too,” said David, “but not so much hunger as yesterday.”

“’Tis queer, now, but I’m not feelin’ th’ hunger so bad, either. But I feels sleepy and weak,” Andy agreed. “I wonders, now, why ’tis? I were thinkin’ we’d grow hungrier and hungrier, till we couldn’t stand un.”

“’Tis strange,” admitted David, “not bein’ so hungry. But I feels like I could eat anything that could be et, and I’m sleepy, too.”

That is the way with folk who starve. While there’s a bit of food to be had the appetite remains keen, and troublesome, but when the food is gone, a day or two of fastin’ finds the appetite waning, and the eyes growing heavy and drowsy, and over the body steals lassitude and weariness.

David and Andy were prisoners, but it was not their nature to give up and resign themselves to their fate until every expedient had been tried. Thomas had said there was a way out of every fix. This was a bad fix—the worst they had ever been in, they were sure, but if there was a way out of it they must try to discover the way.

“There must be a way, now, Davy!” Andy declared, after a long discussion. “Pop says there’s no fix so bad we can’t get out of un if we only thinks out how.”

“If we had any lashin’,” suggested David, “we might fix up somethin’ that would do for snowshoes. But there’s no deerskin, and there’s nothin’ else, I’m thinkin’, would do.”

“There’s th’ rope on th’ flatsled,” said Andy hopefully.

“That wouldn’t make th’ net for one snowshoe,” objected David.

“Let’s get some sticks and bend un into snowshoe frames, and maybe we’ll think o’ some way t’ net un,” suggested Andy. “’Twill be tryin’, whatever!”

“Aye,” agreed David, “’twill be doin’ somethin’, but I’m seein’ no way t’ make th’ nettin’.”

And so, though it seemed futile enough so far as solving their problem was concerned, they cut the necessary sticks close by the tilt door, and set about their task. With an Indian crooked knife David squared and trimmed the sticks into shape, and, steaming them over the kettle, rendered them pliable. Then they bent and tied them.

All that afternoon and next forenoon they worked unceasingly at their task, and at length the frames of two pairs of bear’s paw snowshoes, each snowshoe with one crossbar to stiffen it, were ready for netting.

But think as they would, that seemed the end. There were no deerskin thongs, and not even rope with which to improvise the netting. The boys were steadily growing weaker, and they had almost decided that after all they were in a “fix” from which there was no possible escape, when Andy made a suggestion that revived their hope.