just the same, as Mr. Fits well knew.

"Hold on! Give him his supper, if he'll quiet down," urged Dave Darrin,
aloud, adding, in a whisper to Dick:

"And while he's eating it I'll try to find the nearest house, and get
men to come down here and grab him."

As cautiously as Dave spoke the big fellow heard him.

"Oh, you will, will you?" leered Fits. "Younker, how long do you think
you'd live in the storm that's going on outside? It's a blizzard. If you
don't believe me, go out and see. I'll wait till you come back."

For answer Dave ran to the door and opened it. A swirl of snow greeted
Darrin in the face, and another big swirl of the white fluff blew in on
the floor.

"Go right on out in the snow," jeered Mr. Fits. Dave did so, but the
other five chums kept their gaze steadily on the unwelcome intruder.

"By Jove, fellows," muttered Dave, as he stamped back into the cabin,
"the storm has grown so that I don't believe any of us could get through
it for a distance of three or four miles."

"And you see," continued Mr. Fits, "I stay here to-night for one very
good reason, if I didn't have any others. It would be plain manslaughter
to make me go out into the storm. I'd simply die in it before going a
mile."

"The snow is already up over my knees," confirmed Dave Darrin dismally,
"and I believe it would be twice as deep before I'd been gone an hour."

"So you see it wouldn't be decent to put me out," jeered the big bully,
"even if I were afraid of you younkers and your wild west outfit of toy
guns and archery."

Dave closed and barred the door with a grim tightening around the corner
of his lips.

"Now I'll trouble you boys to stow your amateur theatrical outfit in a
corner and get me a whopping big supper," continued the big fellow, with
a grin, as he returned to his former seat. "If you don't----"

He paused impressively, then added:

"If you don't I'll start something moving here that'll show you who's
boss. Or, if you feel too respectable to like my company, then you can
all put on your overcoats and step outdoors. Maybe you can find your way
to some pleasanter place for the night."

"If we could get through the storm," whispered Dick to Dave, "then we
might leave him here, and get to help who would come down and grab the
scoundrel."

"We'd get along all right at the start," muttered Dave, shaking his
head. "But I don't believe, the way the blizzard is coming now, that
we'd get more than a mile or so