Dave Darrin stood just inside, booted and capped.
"Good enough," muttered Dave, holding out the air rifle. "Now, Greg, you take this pill-shooter and let me go out for the next wood. We'll send a new fellow every time."
"Then you can take my place, Darrin," proposed Hen readily. "Give me that air rifle."
"Humph!" was all Dave said, as he poked Hen outdoors before him, while Dalzell and Hazelton took the logs and stacked them at the further end of the cabin.
When Dave and Hen returned they carried but a log apiece.
"Dick says each fellow is to take only one log at a time," reported Dave. "In that way he thinks we'll last longer and get in more wood. Now, Hen will stay back. Tom, I see you're in your overcoat and ready. Come along with me. Dalzell get ready for the next trip, when I come back with my second log."
"And I'll be ready to help Dick with the crowbar," called out Hazelton, running for his coat.
In this way the Grammar School boys worked rapidly and effectively. Hen was the only one in the crowd who made any objection to the amount of work put upon him. Yet it was an hour and a half, from the start, before Dick would agree that there was wood enough in the cabin.
"For it may snow for three days, and grow colder all the time," Prescott explained. "By morning it may be impossible to get out at all. We don't want to freeze to death."
Truth to tell, the exercise had put all of the Grammar School boys in a fine glow. When, at last, the big lot of wood had been moved and stacked up inside, and they closed the door for good at last, not one of them, despite his hard work in the biting storm, felt really chilled.