"We can't start in and dig from the door, for we'd have to pile the snow in the room back of us," said the hunter. "So the only other plan is to get outside, somehow, and work up to the house, tossing the snow to one side. I may have to dig a trench instead of a tunnel. I'll soon find out."
Finally it was decided that the men should go to the second story, out on a balcony that opened from Mr. DeVere's room, and get down into the snow that way. They would use snowshoes so as to have some support, and thus they could attack the drifts.
This plan was followed. Fortunately Mr. Macksey had thought to bring in snow shovels before the storm came, and with these the men attacked the big white piles.
It was hard work, but they labored with a will, and there were enough of them to make an effective attack. Mr. Macksey, in spite of the fact that he had food and water for his stock, was anxious to see how the animals were doing. So he directed that first paths, tunnels or trenches be made to the various barns.
In some places, around the lee of a building, the ground was bare of snow, and in other places the drifts were fully fifteen feet high.
Russ, who had not gone out to shovel snow, was observed to be nailing some light broad boards together in a peculiar way.
"What are you making?" Ruth asked him.
"Snowshoes for my camera," was his surprising answer.
"Snowshoes for your camera?"
"Yes, I want to get out and take some views, but I can't stand the thin legs of the camera on the snow. They'd pierce through it. So I'm going to put a broad board under each leg, and that will hold the machine up as well as snowshoes hold me."