Presently all their hopes were dashed to the ground by their suddenly emerging upon an open space, close to the very spot where the snow-mass had fallen on Roy’s head. After the first feeling of alarm and disappointment had subsided, Roy plucked up heart and encouraged Nelly by pointing out to her that they had at all events recovered their old track, which they would be very careful not to lose sight of again.
Poor Nelly whimpered a little, partly from cold and hunger as well as from disappointment, as she listened to her brother’s words; then she dried her eyes and said she was ready to begin again. So they set off once more. But the difficulty of discerning the track, if great at first, was greater now, because the falling and drifting snow had well-nigh covered it up completely. In a very few minutes Roy stopped, and, confessing that he had lost it again, proposed to return once more to their starting point to try to recover it. Nelly agreed, for she was by this time too much fatigued and alarmed to have any will of her own, and was quite ready to do whatever she was told without question.
After wandering about for nearly an hour in this state of uncertainty, Roy at last stopped, and, putting his arm round his sister’s waist, said that he had lost himself altogether! Poor Nelly, whose heart had been gradually sinking, fairly broke down; she hid her face in her brother’s bosom, and wept.
“Come now, don’t do that, dear Nell,” said Roy, tenderly, “I’ll tell you what we shall do—we’ll camp in the snow! We have often done it close to the house, you know, for fun, so we’ll do it now in earnest.”
“But it’s so dark and cold,” sobbed Nelly, looking round with a shudder into the dark recesses of the forest, which were by that time enshrouded by the gathering shades of night; “and I’m so hungry too! Oh me! what shall we do?”
“Now don’t get so despairing,” urged Roy, whose courage rose in proportion as his sister’s sank; “it’s not such an awful business after all, for father is sure to scour the woods in search of us, an’ if we only get a comfortable encampment made, an’ a roarin’ fire kindled, why, we’ll sit beside it an’ tell stories till they find us. They’ll be sure to see the fire, you know, so come—let’s to work.”
Roy said this so cheerfully that the child felt a little comforted, dried her eyes, and said she would “help to make the camp.”
This matter of making an encampment in the snow, although laborious work, was by no means a novelty to these children of the backwoods. They had often been taught how to do it by Cousin Walter and Larry O’Dowd, and had made “playing at camps” their chief amusement in fine winter days. When, therefore, they found themselves compelled to “camp-out” from necessity, neither of them was at a loss how to proceed. Roy drew a circle in the snow, about three yards in diameter, at the foot of a large tree, and then both set to work to dig a hole in this space, using their snow-shoes as shovels. It took an hour’s hard work to reach the ground, and when they did so the piled-up snow all round raised the walls of this hole to the height of about six feet.
“Now for bedding,” cried Roy, scrambling over the walls of their camp and going into the woods in search of a young pine-tree, while Nelly sat down on the ground to rest after her toil.
It was a dark night, and the woods were so profoundly obscured, that Roy had to grope about for some time before he found a suitable tree. Cutting it down with the axe which always hung at his girdle, he returned to camp with it on his shoulder, and cut off the small soft branches, which Nelly spread over the ground to the depth of nearly half a foot. This “pine-brush,” as it is called, formed a soft elastic couch.