“Let’s soak some over night, and have it for breakfast,” Peanut suggested, amid hoots of derision from the rest. “We’ll have fresh bread, though,” said Art. “I’m going to bake some in a tin box somebody has left here in a corner of the hut.” “How’ll you make bread without yeast?” asked Rob. Art produced a little sack of baking powder from his pack. “With this, and powdered milk, and powdered egg,” he answered. “You make me up a good fire of coals, and I’ll show you.” He mixed the dough while the rest were clearing up the supper things, greased his tin box (after it had been thoroughly washed with boiling water) with bacon fat, and put the dough in to rise. “I’ll leave it half an hour to raise,” he said, “and go with you fellows up to see the snow arch. Then I’ve got to come back and bake it.” It was moonlight when they set out for the head of the ravine, but the light was not strong enough to make the path easy, nor to take away the sense of gigantic black shadows towering up where the walls ought to be. Peanut tried shouting, to get an echo, but his voice sounded so small and foolish in this great, yawning hole of shadows in the mountainside, that he grinned rather sheepishly, and shut up. The “baby glacier,” as Rob called the snow-drift, was like a white shadow at the foot of the head wall. They could hear the brook tinkling beneath it, but not so loud as by day. When the sun goes down, the melting stops to a very considerable extent. And it was very cold near the icy bank. The boys shivered, and turned back toward camp. “We’ll go with you, Art, and see you bake that bread,” said Rob. But they didn’t. While Art went on, the rest made a side trip in to Hermit Lake, to see the reflections of the moon and stars in the glassy water. Not one, but a dozen hermit thrushes were singing now in the thickets of fir. It was lonesome, and cold, but very beautiful here, and the bird songs rang out like fairy clarions. “This is as lonely as the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,” Rob remarked, “and as beautiful.” “It’s a heap sight colder, though,” said Peanut, shivering. Back in camp, they found Art with his tin of bread dough propped on edge in front of a great bed of coals, with coals banked behind it and on the sides. The others kicked off their shoes and stockings, put on their heavy night socks, rolled up in their blankets under the lean-to, and, propped upon their elbows, watched Art tending his bread, while they talked in low tones. One by one the voices died away to silence. Finally Rob and Mr. Rogers were the only ones awake. Then Mr. Rogers asked Rob a question, and got no answer. He smiled. “Well, Art,” he said, “all the rest seem to think you can get that bread baked without their help. I guess I can trust you, too. Good-night.” “Good-night,” said Art. “They’ll be glad to eat it in the morning, though!” But Mr. Rogers didn’t reply. CHAPTER XIV THE GIANT’S BEDCLOTHES