To Stane the discovery of the stores was a great relief, far greater than the girl knew. Of starvation he had had no fear, for they were in a good game country, but he knew the danger of a meat diet alone, and now that for the time being that danger was eliminated, he was correspondingly relieved; the more so when, two mornings later, the door of the hut being opened they beheld a thin powdering of shot-like snow.
"Winter is here!" said Helen, a little sobered at the sight of the white pall.
"Yes," he answered. "You found this hut just in time."
No more snow fell for over a fortnight, and during that time, despite the cold, Stane spent many hours practising walking without crutches. The fracture had quite knit together, and though his muscles were still weak, he gained strength rapidly, and as far as possible relieved the girl of heavier tasks. He chopped a great deal of wood, in preparation for the bitter cold that was bound to come and stored much of it in the hut itself. He was indefatigable in setting snares, and one day, limping in the wood with a rifle, he surprised a young moose-bull and killed it, and cached the meat where neither the wolves nor the lynxes could reach it. Then at the close of a dull, dark day the wind began to blow across the lake, whistling and howling in the trees behind, and the cold it brought with it penetrated the cabin, driving them closer to the stove. All night it blew, and once, waking behind the tent canvas with which the bunk where she slept was screened, the girl caught a rattle on the wooden walls of the cabin, that sounded as if it were being peppered with innumerable pellets. In the morning the wind had fallen, but the cabin was unusually dark, and investigation revealed that in a single night the snow had drifted to the height of the parchment window. The cold was intense, and there was no stirring abroad; indeed, there was no reason for it, since all the wild life of the forest that they might have hunted, was hidden and still. Seated by the stove after breakfast, Helen was startled by a brace of cracks like those of a pistol. She started up.
"What was that? Some one fired——"
"No!" answered Stane quickly. "Just a couple of trees whose hearts have burst with the cold. There will be no one abroad this weather."
But in that, as events proved, he was mistaken. For when, in the early afternoon, wrapped in the fur garments which the girl had manufactured at their old camp, they ventured forth, not twenty yards away from the hut Stane came suddenly upon a broad snow-shoe trail. At the sight of it he stopped dead.
"What is it?" asked the girl quickly.
"Some one has been here," he said, in a curious voice. Without saying anything further he began to follow the trail, and within a few minutes realized that whoever had made it had come down the lake and had been so interested in the cabin as to walk all around it. The tracks of the great webbed-shoes spoke for themselves and even Helen could read the signs plainly.
"Whoever is it?" she asked in a hushed voice, looking first at the sombre woods and then out on the frozen snow-wreathed lake.