real. He had read and heard of
these things, but that he, Eddie Muldoon, could actually be experiencing
them, sleeping in a real hunter's camp in the dead of winter, tramping
on snow-shoes through great lonely forests, eating such meals as he had
never known before in all his short life--meals cooked over open fires
in the great wonderful out-of-doors, couldn't be. And yet here he was.

The fire died down until only a deep glow, a warm ruddy glow which grew
less and less, lighted the rough interior, and before it had quite
vanished Eddie had slipped from the real which seemed unreal to the
unreal which so often seems real in the realm of dreams.

Three times during the night Pat crawled out of his blankets to put wood
on the fire, but the other sleepers knew nothing of it. They slept the
deep heavy sleep of healthy, tired boys and it mattered not to them that
the temperature dropped until the very trees cracked and split with the
cold. They were as warm and comfortable as if in their own beds at home.
Overhead the stars shone down on a great white world wherein the fire
made but a flickering point of yellow light, and wherein was no sound
save the heavy breathing of the sleepers, the sputter of hot coals
snapping off into the snow, the occasional crack of a frost-riven tree,
and the soft stamp of a snow-shoe rabbit gazing wonder-eyed at the dying
embers.

CHAPTER VIII

ALEC HINTS AT DARK THINGS

Hal was willing to swear that he had not been asleep more than ten
minutes when he was awakened by the beating of a pan with a stick and
Pat's roar of "Breakfast! All hands out for breakfast!" He rolled over
sleepily so as to look out. Pat was laughing at him. Beyond the
firelight and from the tiny strip of sky above the dark tree tops he
could see a few pale stars blinking at him weakly.

"Aw, Pat, that's no joke. You may think it's funny, but it isn't," he
growled, and there was a note of real anger this time.

"What?" demanded Pat with a deep throaty chuckle.

"You know what--waking a feller up when he's just got to sleep and is
dead tired and got a hard day coming!" flared Hal.

"Aisy, aisy, son! Do ye think I would be frying bacon in the middle of
the night for a joke? 'Tis meself has been up this good hour and 'tis
six o'clock this very minute. 'Twill be daylight by the toime we be
ready to start," returned Pat good-humoredly.

Hal had it on the tip of his tongue to say that he didn't believe it,
but b