The cabin had evidently been used as a summer home only, for there was no fireplace or a chimney of any kind, except a dilapidated old length of stovepipe that stuck through the gable at one end. It was this feature that made it look so completely forlorn and abandoned. Besides the door and two windows that opened on the trail side, there was a window on the up end and a door on the stream side which led out onto a crude back porch, built entirely of aspen poles. The floor was of pine boards, and had once been a marvel of beauty and convenience for a mountain cabin; but time had played strange pranks with it, till now it was uneven and sloped off in a jerky fashion toward the back door. On one wall was fastened a rude set of shelves, on which was perched a motley collection of pickle bottles and tin cans. Stretched along one wall stood a crude, home-made table, and in one corner stood the remains of a little, old-fashioned stove. A wooden chest stood under the shelves, and had probably been used for a grub box. It still contained a few pounds of yellow cornmeal, half a can of baking powder, a badly molded loaf of rye bread, and a surprisingly sturdy sample of butter. Hung on a nail in the corner above the chest was a once-stylish skillet and the battered lower part of a double boiler. A rusty tincup lay on the floor beside a powder can that had been used for a bucket, while just inside the south door stood a comical homemade shakedown. The frame was built of straight young aspen poles, while the springs were just a carefully woven layer of balsam boughs spread over a bottom of limber young saplings. It had once been a wonder of comfort and ease, but its value had passed with the departure of its builder. The trail ran close in front of the door and then climbed over the sandy base of a great crag, and disappeared over the hill. Just as it left the level of the house and started upward, there stood an immense Douglas spruce like some faithful guard, his proud green helmet stretched up into the sky so that he might be the more able to see any approaching danger. A great smoke-stained rock lay just at the end of the house, before which was built a primitive fireplace. An assortment of tin cans, lying in the little ravine, told the simple tale of bygone campfire suppers and of hunters and explorers and miners. "Well, this is what I call luck--pure, unadulterated luck, with sugar on it," drawled Ham as he surveyed the house. "Luck, your grandmother," said Phil. "Do you call something that you have been searching for for four long days luck?" "Excuse me," answered Ham, in mock courtesy. "I forgot when I made that statement that there is no such thing as luck. It was my old friend, 'William Shakespeare,' that wrote that famous line about luck, 'Luck is pluck in action,' or something like that, wasn't it? That's what it was here, anyway."