“We’ve beaten Jake,” cried Hugh, in a quick whisper and threw his arms about Nicholas in a great hug of delight. Then he got up stiffly and went to the window to survey the weather. He pushed aside the curtain, rubbed a clear space in the thick frost on the pane and looked out. He gasped and looked once more, with a cry of amazement, as though some strange vision had been presented to his eyes. Yet all he saw was calm, quiet night, a world of glittering snowfields and a clear sky all alight with stars.
“Dick, Dick,” he shouted, and his comrade jumped up hastily.
“What is it?” he asked. “Oh, brr-rr, but it is cold.”
He came to Hugh’s side, looked out also and gave the same gasp of joy.
“I didn’t know,” he cried, his voice almost breaking, “I didn’t know that stars could shine so bright, Hugh!”
What happened next would have shocked Linda Ingmarsson, careful housekeeper that she was, and might even have given some pain to Oscar’s tidy Swedish soul. For both boys, fully dressed, got into one bunk together, with Nicholas between them, “just for company,” as Hugh said. The big dog accomplished wonders in the matter of doubling up his long legs, so that the combined supply of blankets sufficed to cover them all. Gradually, as they began to be a little warmer, both the boys relaxed a little from their long anxiety during the storm. The claim was safe, there was a chance that they could go into the woods in the morning and shoot a partridge or two, if they could manage to drag themselves that far. And now the storm was over, certainly Oscar would come soon. Hugh did not think upon these matters long, however, for he was growing very drowsy.
“Listen,” said Dick at last, rousing himself very sleepily; “what is that sound at the door? Look, Nicholas hears it too.”
The dog had raised his head and was sniffing anxiously, but without moving, as though he, too, were too weary to stir. Hugh listened and heard a sound outside like a soft shuffling in the snow.
“I don’t care what it is,” he announced. “There is nothing on earth that can make me get up now that I am warm and sleepy at last. Here, Nicholas, spare me a bit more blanket. I am going to sleep for a hundred years and dream of a million ham sandwiches.”
He dropped off almost while he was still speaking and Dick, apparently no more energetic than he, closed his eyes also. Nicholas lay with cocked ears listening until the soft sounds gradually ceased, then he, too, dropped into the unheeding slumber that held them all until daylight.