pids. Each of those obstructions cost the boys
half an hour of labor before they could get the toboggan through the
dense underbrush that choked the portage. But they had counted on such
delays.

Not a breath of wind stirred, and the forest was profoundly still.
Full of wild life though it undoubtedly was, not a sign of it was
visible, except now and then a chain of delicate tracks along the shore.

Evening comes early in that latitude and season. At sunset Macgregor
estimated that they had covered thirty miles.

"Time to camp, boys!" he shouted from the rear. "Look out for a good
place--shelter and lots of dry wood."

Two or three miles farther on they found it--a spot where several large
spruce trees had fallen together, and lay dry and dead near the shore.
They drew up the toboggan and exchanged their skating-boots for
moccasins. Maurice began to cut up wood with a small axe; the others
trampled down the snow in a circle.

Dusk was already falling when the fire blazed up, making all at once a
spot of almost home-like cheerfulness. Fred chopped a hole in the ice
in order to fill the kettle, and while it was boiling, they cut down a
number of small saplings, and placed them in lean-to fashion against a
ridgepole. The balsam twigs that they trimmed off they threw inside,
until the snow was covered with a great heap of fragrant boughs. On it
they spread the sleeping-bags to face the fire.

They supped that night on fried bacon, dried eggs, oatmeal cakes, and
tea--real _voyageur's_ tea, hot and strong, flavored with brown sugar
and wood smoke, and drunk out of tin cups.

Leaning back on the balsam couch, they made merry over their meal,
while the stars came out white and clear over the dark woods. There
was every prospect now of their reaching the trappers' cabin in two
days more, at most. There were only the two serious dangers--a
snowstorm might spoil the ice, and Macgregor might not be able to hit
upon the right place.

The boys were tired enough to be drowsy as soon as they had finished
supper. Little by little their conversation flagged; the chance of
finding diamonds ceased to interest them, and presently they built up
the fire and crawled into their sleeping-bags. It was a cold night,
and except for the occasional cry of a hunting owl or lynx, the
wilderness was silent as death.

The boys were up early the next morning; smoke was rising from their
fire before the sun was well off the horizon.