yard, and were shoveling a passageway to the stables. The last flakes
of the blizzard fluttered down upon them, and the tail of the gale
blew the clouds to tatters and revealed the almost black sky with the
stars sparkling like points of living fire.

"Hurrah!" cried Bob Steele. "It's over!"

The guide and the two other men were already getting on their
snowshoes, having eaten hurriedly by the kitchen fire. They started
out at once to rouse the neighbors. By sunrise the sky was entirely
clear and the visitors to the backwoods could climb to the second
floor gallery of the lodge and look out over the great drifts. In
places the snow was heaped fifteen feet high; but the men shuffled
off over these drifts and back again as easily as they would have
walked on six inches of snow.

They brought with them six other men, who also sat down to breakfast
in the big kitchen, while Mr. Cameron and the boys and Mrs.
Murchiston finished their meal in the dining-room. To the surprise of
the visitors to the camp, one of the men whom Long Jerry had brought
in to help find the girls was the Rattlesnake Man, as he was called.

"We found him poking about the woods by himself, sir," said Long
Jerry, privately, to Mr. Cameron. "He says there's been a boy staying
with him for a while back, and that he started out hunting just
before the storm. The old hermit was looking for him. By what he
says, I believe it's the same boy you folks was bringing up here-the
one that claims to be Fred Hatfield."

"That poor fellow may have lost himself in the blizzard, too, eh?"