the time the Banner Boy Scouts ever failed, will you, when they'd set
their minds on doing anything worth while? We're bound to get
there."

The work went on. By turns the members of the relief party applied
themselves to the task of cutting a way through the snow heap, and
when each had come up for the third time it became apparent that they
were near the end of their labor, for signs of the rock began to
appear.

Inspired by this fact they took on additional energy, and the way the
snow flew under the vigorous attack of Jud was pretty good evidence
that he still believed in their ultimate success.

"Now watch my smoke!" remarked Tom Betts, as he took the shovel in his
turn and proceeded to show them what he could do. "I've made up my
mind to keep everlastingly at it till I strike solid rock. And I'll do
it, or burst the boiler."

He had hardly spoken when they heard the plunging metal shovel strike
something that gave out a positive "chink," and somehow that sound
seemed to spell success.

"Guess you've gone and done it, Tom!" declared Jud, with something
like a touch of chagrin in his voice, for Jud had been hoping he would
be the lucky one to show the first results.

There was no slackening of their ardor, and the boys continued to
shovel the snow out of the hole at a prodigious rate until every one
could easily see the crevice in the rocks.

"Listen!" exclaimed Jud just then.

"Oh! what do you think you heard?" asked Bobolink.

"I don't know whether it was the shovel scraping over the rock or a
human groan," Jud continued, looking unusually serious.

They all listened, but could hear nothing except the cold wind sighing
through some of the trees not far away.

"Let me finish the work for you, Tom," suggested Paul, seeing that Tom
Betts was pretty well exhausted from his labors.

"I guess I will, Paul, because I'm nearly tuckered out," admitted the
persistent worker, as he handed the implement over, and pushed back,
though still remaining in the hole.

Paul was not very long in clearing away the last of the snow that
clogged the entrance to the old bears' den. They could then mark the
line of the gaping hole that cleft the rock, and which served as an
antechamber to the cavity that lay beyond.

"That does it, Paul," said Jack, softly; though just why he spoke half
under his breath he could not have explained if he had been asked,
except that, somehow, it seemed as though they were very close to s