ng time when they
scent food."

"Well, we will have the dogs sleep up here for the future. They will act
as sentries, and there is none too much air down there. That reminds me,
I will cut a long pole or two, fasten them together, and try and drive
them down through the snow to the roof of the shelter below."

Luka shook his head. "You might drive it down five or six feet, but you
would never get it down to the roof, and if you did you could never pull
it up again."

"I don't know, Luka. I once saw them driving down some bars in tough
clay when they were making a railway cutting at home. I think we might
do it in the same way."

Godfrey after breakfast cut a pole, chopping it off just below where two
or three small branches had shot from it, leaving a bulge. This bulge he
shaped and smoothed very carefully with his knife, so that it was in the
form of a peg-top.

"There," he said. "You see it is thicker here than it is anywhere else,
so that the hole it makes will be a little larger than the pole itself,
and instead of the snow holding the pole all the way down it will touch
it only on this shoulder."

This succeeded admirably. It was six feet long. They had cleared away
the loose snow to a depth of eighteen inches, and both holding it were
able to force the pole down as much more; then they hammered it with a
billet of wood until only a foot showed; then they spliced another to
it, and working it up and down jumped it in until they could again use
the mallet, and at last struck on something solid, which could only be
one of the beams forming the roof of the hut. Godfrey went below, and
soon discovered the spot where the pole came down, and with his knife
managed to clear away the snow round it. Then he went up and assisted
Luka to withdraw the pole, which left a hole of about three inches in
diameter.

"That is a capital chimney," he said. "Now we will throw a few fir
branches over it, to prevent the dogs treading here and shutting it up.
I think the air looks rather lighter, Luka, and that the storm is nearly
over. There is a howl again. I am afraid that we are going to have
trouble with the wolves. Is there anything we can do?"

Luka shook his head. "We might get up into trees," he said. "We should
be safe there, but then we should lose the dogs."

"That would never do, Luka; we should have to haul the sledge back a
hundred and fifty miles. No, I'll tell you what we will do: we will cut
down some young tr