“Look! To our left!” called Lanky Wallace, stopping, and pointing off through a small clump of brush.
“It’s the same hut!” said Frank. “Only we’re looking at it from the other side!”’
A council again was called. Here were four boys out in the mountains, fully ten or twelve miles from Todd’s, and, if their estimates were good, about eight or ten miles from Old Moose Lake, unable to figure out which way they should go.
“Shall we go back to Todds and get a fresh start?” asked Paul Bird.
“Sure not!” Lanky Wallace gave the answer. “If we went back there we’d get the same directions we got before, wouldn’t we? And then we’d come to the same place. I believe we lost ourselves somewhere else.”
“That is exactly what I think,” Frank agreed with Lanky. “I’ll tell you, fellows, what I think we should do—let’s pitch camp right here by this hut. Just as Lanky says, it would not be best to get under it because of this wind, but let’s get near, protected by the brush and trees, and stay all night. It is getting late in the day, and we ought to rest. Then to-morrow we’ll start again.”
So the packs were unlimbered, blankets drawn out, a fire was soon started, and, without taking any food, for they had brought only enough for one meal from Todds, they camped in the clump of hemlocks near the hut.
Until dark they stood around the fire and talked, for a time forgetting their plight and joking about things which had happened during the weeks past. At dark they prepared to turn in, rolled in their blankets, the snow continuing to fall heavily.
It was some time in the middle of the night, with no moon up, that Frank was suddenly startled from his sleep by a mysterious sound. He sat bolt upright. Ahead of him a pair of glaring balls of green fire danced!
He realized that some one else was at his side, and saw, from the corner of his eye, Lanky Wallace staring at the same thing.