erative that
they should reach the cabin before nightfall.

That forenoon they made all the speed they could, halted for only a
brief rest at noon, and pushed on energetically through the afternoon.
The cabin could not be far, unless Macgregor had mistaken the way.
Look as he would, he could not make out any landmarks that he could
remember; but he had been through only by canoe in the summer, and the
woods have a very different appearance in the winter.

As the afternoon wore on they began to grow anxious. At every turning
they looked eagerly ahead, but they saw nothing except the unbroken
forest. It was nearly sunset when Maurice suddenly pointed forward
with a shout of excitement.

They had just rounded a bend of the river. A hundred yards away,
nestling in a hemlock thicket, stood a squat log hut. But no trail led
to its door, no smoke rose from its chimney, the snow had drifted
almost to its eaves, and it looked gloomy and desolate as the darkening
wilderness itself.

CHAPTER III

There was so grim an air of desolation about the hut that the boys
stopped short with a sense of dread.

"Can this really be it?" Maurice muttered.

The hut and its surroundings were exactly as the Indian had described
them. They ventured forward hesitatingly, reconnoitered, and
approached the door. It stood ajar two or three inches; a heavy drift
of snow lay against it. Clearly no living man was in the cabin.

"We've come too late, boys," said Macgregor. "However, let's have a
look."

Using one of his snowshoes as a shovel, he began to clear the doorway.
Fred helped him. They scraped away the snow, and forced the door open.

For fear of infection, they contented themselves with peeping in from
the entrance; a glance showed them that no man was in that dim
interior, dead or alive.

The cabin was a mere hut, built of small logs, chinked with moss and
mud, and was less than five feet high at the eaves. The floor was of
clay; the roof appeared to be of bark and moss thatch, supported on
poles. A small window of some skin or membrane let in a faint light,
and the rough fireplace was full of snow that had blown down the
chimney.

No one was there, but some one had left in haste. The whole interior
was in the wildest confusion, littered with all sorts of articles of
forest housekeeping flung about pell-mell--cooking-utensils, scraps of
clothing, blankets, furs, traps; they could not make out all the
articles t