very feet of the bear.

"Well, we've got to take a chance!" declared Macgregor at last. "Talk about cold feet! We'll certainly have them frozen if we stand here much longer. Scatter out, boys, all around the camp. Then we'll snowball the brute out. Likely he's too scared to want to fight. Anyhow, if he jumps out on one side, the man on the opposite side must jump into the camp and grab a rifle."

It looked risky, to provoke a charge from the animal in that deep snow, where they could hardly move, but they waded around the camp till they stood at equal distances apart, surrounding the hollowed space.

"Now let him have it!" cried Peter.

Immediately they began to throw snowballs into the camp, aiming at that dark hole under the cedar roof where the animal was hidden. But the snow was too dry to pack into lumps, and the light masses they flung produced no effect. Peter broke off branches from a dead tree and threw them into the shelter, without causing the bear to come out. Finally Fred, who happened to be standing beside a birch tree, peeled off a great strip of bark and lighted it with a match.

"Hold on! Don't throw that!" yelled Peter.

He was too late. Fred had already cast the flaming mass into the camp, too close to the piles of cedar twigs. The resinous leaves caught and flashed up. There was a glare of smoky flame—a wild scramble and scurry under the shelter, and the bear burst out, and plunged at the snowy sides of the pit on the side opposite Fred's position.

He fell back as he had done before, but floundered up with a second leap. Maurice, who was nearest, gave a shrill yell and tried to dash aside, but he stumbled and went head-long in the deep snow.

Fred instantly leaped into the camp. The shelter was full of smoke and light flame, but he knew where the rifles lay, and snatched one. Straightening up, he was just in time to see the bear vanishing with long leaps into the darkness, ploughing up clouds of snow.

He fired one shot wildly, then another, but there was no sign of the animal's being stopped, and the next instant it was out of sight.

"Quick! Stamp out this fire!" exclaimed Peter at his shoulder.

They tore down the flaming branches and beat them out in the snow. The light flame was easily put out, but it left the camp a chaos of blackened twigs and ashes.

"Well, we turned him out," said Maurice, who had hastened in to help. "Did you hit him, do you think?"

"I wish I'd killed him!" said Fred. "He's ruined our camp. But I don't believe I touched him. He was going too fast."

Peter had raked the camp-fire together and thrown on fresh wood. A bright blaze sprang up, and by its light they took off their stockings and looked for the dead white of frozen toes. But it was only Maurice who had suffered the least frost-bite, and this yielded to a little snow-rubbing. The heavy woolen stockings, and perhaps the depth of the snow itself had protected the rest of them.

Putting on his moccasins Fred then went to look for results from his shots, but came back reporting not a drop of blood on the snow. The bullets had missed cleanly, and the animal was probably miles away by that time.

"What do you suppose he'll do for the rest of the winter?" Maurice asked.

"Oh, he'll find some hole to crawl into, or perhaps he'll just creep under a log and let the snow bury him," said Peter. "He'll have to look a long time to find another snug nest like this one, though."

The big log was hollow, as they had thought, and the fire had burned well into the cavity. They could see the nest where the bear had lain, soft with rotted wood and strewn with black hairs. It seemed a pity to have turned him out of so cozy a sleeping-place.

The boys' own sleeping-place was in a complete state of wreck. The cedar roofing had fallen in, and everything was littered with snow and burned brush. The fire had been too light and too quickly extinguished to do any damage to the stores, however, and they were relieved to find that the bear had eaten none of the bacon or bread. Probably the animal had been merely cowering there for shelter, afraid to come out.

They did not attempt to rebuild the shelter roof, but cleared away the snow and ashes, and sat in their sleeping-bags by the fire. After all the excitement none of them felt like sleeping. They were hungry, though, and finally they boiled tea and cooked a pan of bacon and dried eggs. Even after this they lay talking for a long time, and it was between midnight and dawn when they finally fell asleep.

This was the reason why it was long after sunrise when they awoke, feeling rather as if they had had a bad night. It was another clear, bright day, though still very cold, and they felt it imperative that they should reach the cabin before nightfall.

That forenoon they made all the speed they could, halted for only a brief rest at noon, and pushed on energetically through the afternoon. The cabin could not be far, unless Macgregor had mistaken the way. Look as he would, he could not make out any landmarks that he could remember; but he had been through only by canoe in the summer, and the woods have a very different appearance in the winter.

As the afternoon wore on they began to grow anxious. At every turning they looked eagerly ahead, but they saw nothing except the unbroken forest. It was nearly sunset when Maurice suddenly pointed forward with a shout of excitement.

They had just rounded a bend of the river. A hundred yards away, nestling in a hemlock thicket, stood a squat log hut. But no trail led to its door, no smoke rose from its chimney, the snow had drifted almost to its eaves, and it looked gloomy and desolate as the darkening wilderness itself.

CHAPTER III

There was so grim an air of desolation about the hut that the boys stopped short with a sense of dread.

"Can this really be it?" Maurice muttered.

The hut and its surroundings were exactly as the Indian had described them. They ventured forward hesitatingly, reconnoitered, and approached the door. It stood ajar two or three inches; a heavy drift of snow lay against it. Clearly no living man was in the cabin.

"We've come too late, boys," said Macgregor. "However, let's have a look."

Using one of his snowshoes as a shovel, he began to clear the doorway. Fred helped him. They scraped away the snow, and forced the door open.

For fear of infection, they contented themselves with peeping in from the entrance; a glance showed them that no man was in that dim interior, dead or alive.

The cabin was a mere hut, built of small logs, chinked with moss and mud, and was less than five feet high at the eaves. The floor was of clay; the roof appeared to be of bark and moss thatch, supported on poles. A small window of some skin or membrane let in a faint light, and the rough fireplace was full of snow that had blown down the chimney.

No one was there, but some one had left in haste. The whole interior was in the wildest confusion, littered with all sorts of articles of forest housekeeping flung about pell-mell—cooking-utensils, scraps of clothing, blankets, furs, traps; they could not make out all the articles that encumbered the floor.

"The fellow must have simply got well and gone away with the other half-breed," said Macgregor, after they had surveyed the place in silence. "Well, that ends our hope of being millionaires next year. We've come on a fool's errand."

"Nothing for it now but to go home again, is there?" said Fred, in disgust.

"We've come one hundred and fifty miles to see this camp, and we ought to look through it," said Maurice.

"We must disinfect the place before we can go in. And there's no chance of our finding any diamonds here," Fred remarked.

"I want to have a look through, anyway. Let's get out the fumigating machine."

It was a formaldehyde outfit, consisting simply of a can of the disinfectant with a bracket