Rory shrugged his shoulders.
When they were having their mid-day meal Rory returned to the charge.
“Were ever you lost in the snow?” he said to Seth.
“More’n once,” replied Seth.
“Tell us.”
“Once in partikler,” said Seth, “three of us were movin’ around in a wild bit o’ country. It were skootin’ after the b’ars we were, with our snow-shoes on, for the snow were plaguey deep. I was a bit younger then, and I calculate that accounted for a deal of my headlong stupidity. Anyhow, we lost our way, and when we got our bearings again, night was beginning to fall, and as we didn’t fancy passing it away from the log fire, we just made about all the haste we knew how to. I knew every tree, even with snow on ’em, but I hadn’t taken correct note of the rocks and gullies and such. And presently, blame me, gentlemen, if I didn’t miss my footing and go tumbling down to the bottom of a pit, twenty feet deep if it were an inch. I didn’t go quite alone, though. No, I just drops my gun and clutches Jager by the hand, and down we goes together in the most affectionate manner ever you could wish to see.
“Nat Weekley was a-comin’ sliding up some ways in the rear. He was lookin’ at his toes like, and didn’t see us disappear, but he told us afterwards he kind o’ missed us all of a suddint, you see, and guessed we’d gone somewheres down into the bowels o’ the earth. He was an amoosin kind of a ’possum, was old Nat. Presently he discovered our hole, and laying himself cautiously down on the lower side of it, so’s he shouldn’t fall, he peers over the brink. He couldn’t see us for a bit, with the blinding snow-powder we’d raised. But Nat wasn’t going to be done.
“‘Anybody down there?’ says Nat, quite unconcernedly.
“‘To be sure there is,’ says we; ‘didn’t you see us go in?’