their door slept the Porcupine, and a hole through its winter
robe formed a bubbling spring of water, crystal clear and
painfully cold. But they soon grew to find fault with even that.
The hole would persist in freezing up, and thus gave them many a
miserable hour of ice-chopping. The unknown builders of the cabin
had extended the sidelogs so as to support a cache at the rear.
In this was stored the bulk of the party's provisions.

Food there was, without stint, for three times the men who were
fated to live upon it. But the most of it was the kind which
built up brawn and sinew, but did not tickle the palate.

True, there was sugar in plenty for two ordinary men; but these
two were little else than children. They early discovered the
virtues of hot water judiciously saturated with sugar, and they
prodigally swam their flapjacks and soaked their crusts in the
rich, white syrup.

Then coffee and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made
disastrous inroads upon it. The first words they had were over
the sugar question. And it is a really serious thing when two
men, wholly dependent upon each other for company, begin to
quarrel.

Weatherbee loved to discourse blatantly on politics, while
Cuthfert, who had been prone to clip his coupons and let the
commonwealth jog on as best it might, either ignored the subject
or delivered himself of startling epigrams. But the clerk was too
obtuse to appreciate the clever shaping of thought, and this
waste of ammunition irritated Cuthfert.