"We do," they said together, and they meant it.

Their situation was uncommon, and their pleasure in it deepened. The
snow still fell, but the lean-tos, built with so much skill by soldiers
and mountaineers, protected them, and the fires before them sank to great
beds of gleaming coals that gave out a grateful warmth. Far overhead the
wind still shrieked and howled, as if in anger because it could not get
at them in the deep cleft. But for Dick all these shrieks and howls
were transformed into a soothing song by his feeling of comfort, even of
luxury. The cove was full of warmth and light and he basked in it.

Pennington and Warner fell asleep, but Dick lay a while in a happy,
dreaming state. He felt as he looked up at the cloudy sky and driving
snow that, after all, there was something wild in every man that no
amount of civilization could drive out. An ordinary bed and an ordinary
roof would be just as warm and better sheltered, but they seldom gave him
the same sense of physical pleasure that he felt as he lay there with the
storm driving by.

His dreamy state deepened, and with it the wilderness effect which the
little valley, the high mountains around it and the raging winter made.
His mind traveled far back once more and he easily imagined himself his
great ancestor, Paul Cotter, sleeping in the woods with his comrades and
hidden from Indian attack. While the feeling was still strong upon him
he too fell asleep, and he did not awaken until it was time for him to
take the watch with Pennington and Warner.

It was then about two o'clock in the morning, and the snow had ceased to
fall, but it lay deep in all places not sheltered, while the wind had
heaped it up many feet in all the gorges and ravines of the mountains.
Dick thought he had never beheld a more majestic world. All the clouds
were gone and hosts of stars glittered in a sky of brilliant blue.
On every side of them rose the lofty peaks and ridges, clothed in
gleaming white, the forests themselves a vast, white tracery. The air
was cold but pure and stimulating. The wind had ceased to blow, but from
far points came the faint swish of sliding snow.

Dick folded his blankets, laid them away carefully, put on his heavy
overcoat and gloves, and was ready. Colonel Winchester maintained a
heavy watch, knowing its need, fully fifty men, rifle on shoulder and
pistol at belt, patrolling all the ways by which a foe could come.

Dick and his comrades w