CHAPTER IV
SNOW-BOUND
"I don't believe there ever was such a furious snow-storm as this before!" Toby remarked, after a while, with a little pensive sigh, as though he had already begun to repent having conceived that brilliant idea, in the following out of which they had fallen into their present serious predicament.
"Oh! that's because the wish is father to the thought, Toby," Elmer told him. "We all like to stand up ahead of the other fellows. If you were home right now I reckon you'd just say that it was a pretty decent sort of a storm; but being cooped up here in the woods makes things look different."
"How deep do you think she is on the level, Elmer?" asked Lil Artha; "as much as three feet?"
"Nothing like that," replied the other, quickly; "you mustn't judge by seeing what's piled up there. That's a drift, and the eddies of wind have been piling it up all night long. You see the snow is as dry almost as powder, owing to the cold. It's quit falling in big flakes, and is sifting down now in fine stuff."
"Yes, and it gets down your back every time, if you don't look out," complained George. "This beats my time all hollow. I wonder how it'll end."
Elmer purposely made out to mistake the croaker's meaning; he knew that George was thinking of the dismal outlook by which they were confronted, but chose to pretend it was something else that was intended.
"What, this storm, George?" he said, cheerily; "oh! it'll wind up before a great while. They all have their innings, you know, some longer than others."
"I should say this was one of the longest, then," George affirmed.