down. They piled on all the rest
of the wood, and went to sleep huddled up by the fire, reckless whether
they froze or not.

Fred was awakened from a painful and uneasy slumber by Peter's shaking
his arm.

"Your ears are frozen," the Scotchman was saying. "Rub them with snow
at once."

While asleep, Fred had fallen back beyond the range of heat. It was
broad daylight, and snowing fast. The fire was low. All of them were
covered with white, and Maurice was still asleep, sitting up, with his
head fallen forward on his knees.

Never in his life did Fred feel so unwilling to move. He did not feel
cold; he hardly felt anything. All he wanted was to stay as he was and
be let alone.

But Macgregor insisted on rousing him, dragged him up, protesting, and
rubbed snow on his ears. Fred was very angry, but the scuffle set his
blood moving again. His ears were not badly frozen, but the skin came
off as he rubbed them. They bled, and the blood froze on as it ran,
and made him a rather ghastly spectacle.

[Illustration: DRAGGED HIM UP, PROTESTING, AND RUBBED SNOW ON HIS EARS]

Maurice was awakened by the disturbance, and sat up stiffly. He
declared that his neuralgia was much better.

They built up the fire again, and sat beside it, shivering. Fred felt
utterly incapable either of action or of thought, and even his hunger
had grown numbed. Maurice obviously felt no better, and Macgregor, who
seemed to retain a little energy, looked at them both with a face of
the gravest concern. Presently he rose, put on his snowshoes, took a
long pole, and started away with an air of determination.

Maurice and Fred remained sitting by the fire in a sort of lethargy,
and exchanged hardly a word. Macgregor was gone almost an hour; then
he came back at a run, covered with snow, and carrying a dead hare. He
skinned the animal, cleaned it, cut it into pieces, and set it to
roast. At the odor of the roasting meat, the boys' appetites revived,
and they began to take the fragments from the spits before they were
half cooked. The scorched, unsalted meat was even more tasteless and
nauseating than that of the grouse, but they all bolted it voraciously,
and washed it down by eating snow.

Almost immediately afterward they were taken with distressing cramps
and vomiting, which left both Maurice and Fred in a state of weak
collapse. Macgregor suffered least, perhaps because he had eaten less
incautiously. He alone bore the bur