horror of that exertion would never end; then suddenly the night seemed to turn pitch black, and he felt himself shaken by the shoulder.

"Get on the toboggan, Maurice! Come, wake up!" Macgregor was saying. "Wake up!"

Dimly he realized that he was sitting on the ice—that they had stopped—that Fred was up again. Too stupefied to question anything, he rolled into the blanket out of which Fred had crawled, and instantly went sound asleep.

It seemed only a moment until he was roused again. Drunk with sleep, he clutched the towrope blindly, while Fred, who was completely done this time, again took his place on the sledge. Only Macgregor seemed proof against fatigue. Bent against the gale, he skated vigorously at the forward end of the line, and his strong voice shouted back encouragements that Maurice hardly heard.

The snow was now growing so deep on the ice that the skates ploughed through it with difficulty. Still the boys labored on, minute after minute, mile after mile. Maurice felt numb with fatigue and half asleep as he skated blindly, and suddenly he ran sharply into Macgregor, who had stopped short. There was another break just ahead—a long cascade this time, where snowy pocks showed like white blurs on the black water.

"Going to portage?" mumbled Maurice.

"No use trying to go any farther," replied the medical student, and his voice was hoarse. "Fred's played out. Snow's getting too deep, anyway. Better camp here."

Maurice would have been glad to drop where he stood. But they dragged the toboggan ashore somehow, caring little where they landed it. Peter rolled Fred off into the snow. The boy groaned, but did not waken, and they began to unpack the supplies with stiffened hands.

"Got to get something hot into us quick," said Peter thickly. "Help me make a fire."

Probably they were all nearer death than they realized. Maurice wanted only to sleep. However, in a sort of daze, he broke off branches, peeled bark, and they had a fire blazing up in the falling snowflakes. The wind whirled and scattered it, but they piled on larger sticks, and Macgregor filled the kettle from the river. When the water was hot he poured in a whole tin of condensed milk, added a cake of chocolate, a handful of sugar and another of oatmeal, too stiffened to measure out anything.

Maurice had collapsed into a dead sleep in the snow. Peter shook him awake, and between them they managed to arouse Fred with great difficulty. Still half asleep they swallowed the rich, steaming mess from the kettle. It set their blood moving again, but they were too thoroughly worn out to think of building a camp. They crept into their sleeping-bags, buttoned the naps down over their heads and went to sleep regardless of consequences.

Fred awoke to find himself almost steaming hot, and in utter darkness and silence. All his muscles ached, and he could not imagine where he was. A weight held him down when he tried to move, but he turned over at last and sat up with an effort. A glare of white light made him blink. He had been buried under more than two feet of snow.

It was broad daylight. All the world was white, and a raging snowstorm was driving through the forest. The tree-tops creaked and roared, and the powdery snow whirled like smoke. Fred felt utterly bewildered. There was no sign of the camp-fire, nor of the toboggan, nor of any of his companions, nothing but a few mounds on the drifted white surface.

Finally he crawled out of his sleeping-outfit and dug into one of these mounds. Two feet down he came upon the surface of a sleeping-bag, and punched it vigorously. It stirred; the flap opened, and Macgregor thrust his face out, blinking, red and dazed.

"Time to get up!" Fred shouted.

Mac crawled out and shook off the snow, looking disconcerted.

"Snowed in, with a vengeance!" he remarked. "Where's the camp—and where's Maurice?"

After prodding about they located the third member of their party at last, and dug him out. As for the camp, there was none, and they could only guess at where the toboggan with their stores might be buried.

"This ends our skating," said Maurice. "It'll have to be snowshoes after this. Good thing we got so far last night."

"No thanks to me!" Fred remarked. "I was the expert skater; I believe I said I'd set the pace, and I was the first to cave in. I hope I do better with the snowshoes."

"Neither snowshoes nor skates to-day," said Peter. "We can't travel till this storm blows over. Nothing for it but to build a camp and sit tight."

After groping about for some time they found the toboggan, unstrapped the snowshoes, and used them as shovels to clear away a circular place. In doing so they came upon the black brands of last night's fire, with the camp kettle upon them where they had left it. Fred ploughed through the snow and collected wood for a fresh fire, while Peter and Maurice set up stakes and poles and built a roof of hemlock branches to afford shelter from the storm. It was only a rude shed with one side open to face the fire, but it kept off the snow and wind and proved fairly comfortable. Fred had coffee made by this time, and it did not take long to fry a pan of bacon. They seated themselves on a heap of boughs at the edge of the shelter and ate and drank. They all were stiff and sore, but the hot food and coffee made a decided improvement.

"What surprises me," remarked Maurice, "is that we didn't freeze last night, sleeping under the snow. But I never felt warmer in bed."

"It was the snow that did it. Snow makes a splendid nonconductor of heat," replied Macgregor. "Better than blankets. I remember hearing of a man who was caught by a blizzard crossing a big barren up north with a train of dogs. The dogs wouldn't face the storm; he lost his directions; and finally he turned the sledge over and got under it with the dogs around him, and let it snow. He stayed there a day and a half, asleep most of the time, and wouldn't have known when the storm was over, only that a pack of timber wolves smelt him and tried to dig him out. They ran when they found out what was there, but he bagged two of them with his rifle."

"I don't believe even timber wolves would have wakened me this morning. I never was so stiff and used up in my life," Maurice commented on this tale of adventure.

"Yes, we need the rest," said Mac. "We overdid it yesterday, and we couldn't have gone far to-day in any case."

"But meanwhile that man at the cabin may be dying," exclaimed Fred.

"If he's dead it can't be helped," responded the Scotchman. "We're doing all that's humanly possible. But if he's alive, don't forget that he can't get away while this storm lasts, any more than we can."

"Well, it looks as if the storm would last all day," said Fred, gazing upwards.

The blizzard did last all that day, reaching its height toward the middle of the afternoon, but it was not extremely cold, and the boys were fairly comfortable. They lounged on the blankets in the shelter of the camp, and recuperated from their fatigue, discussing their chances of still reaching the cabin in time to do any good. None of them could guess accurately how far they had come in that terrible night, but at the worst they could not think the cabin more than forty miles farther. This distance would have to be traveled on snowshoes, however, not skates, and none of the boys were very expert snowshoers. It would be certainly more than one day's tramp.

Toward night the wind lessened, though it was still snowing fast. The boys piled on logs enough to keep the fire smouldering all night in spite of the snowflakes, and went to sleep under cover of the hemlock roof. Maurice awoke toward the middle of the night, and noticed drowsily that it had stopped snowing, and that a star or two was visible overhead.

Next morning dawned sparkling clear and very cold, with not a breath of wind. Everything was deep and fluffy with the fresh snow, and when the sun came up the glare was almost blinding. It would be good