“It was quite all my fault,” interposed the Chief. “It came to a question of two roads and I picked out the wrong one. Well, here we are, anyway, and I guess we’re not all dead yet. Sam, as the defeated ones, we ought to do the toiling, but you can see that our crowd is pretty badly tuckered out. Suppose you and Steve take some of the chaps and see what can be done about getting some fires lighted.” He glanced about the building dubiously. “Not a very warm place for the night, is it?” he continued. “Those boys ought to get their feet dry, but I don’t just see----” “You leave it all to us, sir,” said Sam. “Better sit down and get rested. Sorry you had such hard luck.” “Yes, it was tough on some of the youngsters. This place seems dry, at least. Well----” The Chief’s voice trailed into silence and, removing the blanket from his shoulder, he made a cushion of it and sat down with his back to the railing. Then he smiled up at Sam and Steve ruefully. “I’m just about all in,” he said. “I don’t see how some of those boys stood it. By Jove, I don’t!” “Don’t worry about them, Chief,” said Mr. Gifford. “They’ll be as fit as fiddles in the morning. The question now is----” “Fires and grub,” interrupted Steve cheerfully. “You get your breath back, Andy. Sam and Mr. Haskins and I will look after things. ‘Blues,’ this way! Come on, fellows, we’re going to hunt wood and build some fires. Scatter now! Bring in all the dead branches you can find and anything else that will burn. Never mind if it’s wet, bring it along. But don’t do any damage to anything. Remember you’re Scouts, fellows. Carry the wood over there where you see those barrels and boxes. Hustle now!” Off they went with a will. Sam and Steve and Mr. Haskins crossed to where, at some distance, a litter of broken boxes and old barrels was piled. Here, as they expected, they found a sandy pit in which it was evidently the custom to burn rubbish. “We can have a roaring old blaze here,” said Steve. “Guess, though, we’d better have, say, three small fires that we can get close up to. Wish there was a shelter near, though. I suppose this stuff is sopping wet.” He pulled some of the underneath boxes out and found that they were in places fairly dry, however, and he and Sam proceeded to knock them to pieces and store them in one of the barrels, which they turned on its side. Mr. Haskins wandered away toward a long open shed used for carriages. A minute or two later the boys began to arrive with armfuls of branches, fragments of boxes and such. It was all pretty wet, but, as Steve said, once get your fire started and they’d burn finely and all the hotter for being damp. Then Mr. Haskins returned dragging a big piece of canvas, evidently at one time either a portion of a tent or a tarpaulin such as is used to cover loaded wagons. “I thought,” he explained, exhibiting his find proudly, “that if we could manage to spread this over our heads somehow----”