If you have ever melted a pan of snow on even so good a fire as is in your mother’s kitchen range, you know that snow melts very slowly. It was this way with Bert. He thought the snow in the can would never melt down into water, and when it did, and was fairly boiling, he took hold of the top and threw all the water out!
Why did he do that? you ask. Well, because he wanted to be sure the can was clean, and his mother had told him that boiling water would destroy almost any kind of germ. The can might have had germs in it, having lain outdoors a long time.
“But now I guess it’s clean,” Bert said, as he again filled it with snow after he had rinsed it out. Then he waited for the second quantity of snow to melt, and when this had cooled, which did not take very long, Bert took a drink. The snow water did not taste very good—boiled water very seldom does—but it was safer than eating dry snow.
“Well, now I must travel on,” said Bert, as he scattered snow over the fire to put it out. “I’ll carry a little water with me in the can, for I may get thirsty again. It won’t freeze for a while.”
He walked along as fast as he could, with the pain in his leg, but the snow came down harder and faster and the wind blew colder. Bert looked about for some place of shelter and saw where one tree had blown over against another, making a sort of little den, or cave, near the side of a high rock, which was so steep that the snow had not clung to it, leaving the big stone bare.
“I’ll go in there and stay awhile,” thought Bert, as he caught sight of this shelter. “Maybe the storm won’t last long.”
But as he started to enter the place he heard a growl! There was a scurrying in the dried leaves that formed a carpet for the den, and then, in the half-darkness, Bert saw two green eyes staring at him! He smelled a wild odor, too, that told him some beast of the forest dwelt in this den.
“Oh! A wildcat!” cried Bert, as, a moment later, there sprang out at him the same animal, or one very like it, that he had snowballed a little while before. Probably it was another lynx, but Bert did not stop to think of this.
