It had been strongly built to resist the cold, though as a rule the owner did not come up here after the leaves were off the forest trees. A stove in one room could be used to keep it as warm as toast when foot-long lengths of wood were fed to its capacious maw. The fire in the big open hearth served to heat the other room, and over this the cooking was also done.
Several bunks gave promise of snug sleeping quarters. As these would accommodate only four 111 it was evident that lots must be cast to see who the lucky quartette would prove to be.
“To-morrow,” said Paul, when speaking of this lack of accommodations, “one of the very first things we do will be to fix other bunks, because every scout should have a decent place for his bed. There’s plenty of room in here to make a regular scout dormitory of it.”
“Fine!” commented Tom Betts; “and those of us who draw the short straws can manage somehow with our blankets on the floor for one night, I guess.”
“We’ve all slept soundly on harder beds than that, let me tell you,” asserted Bobolink, “and for one I decline to draw a straw. Me for the soft side of a plank to-night, you hear.”
The other boys knew that Bobolink, in his generosity, really had in mind Phil and one or two more of the boys, not quite so accustomed to roughing it as others of the campers.
That supper, eaten under such novel surroundings, would long be remembered; for while these boys were old hands at camping, up to now they had never spent any time in the open while Jack Frost had his stamp on all nature, and the earth was covered with snow.
It was, all things considered, one of the greatest evenings in their lives.