When they awoke, after their deep slumbers, they at once concluded, from the altered and lighter hue of all around them, as well as by their own feelings, that it must be day without; and with one accord commenced, with their hatchets, cutting and digging a hole through the wall of their snowy prison-house, in the place where they judged it most likely to be thinnest. After working by turns some thirty or forty minutes, and cutting or beating out an upward passage eight or ten yards in extent, they suddenly broke through into the open air. The roaring of the storm no longer greeted their ears. The terrible conflict of the elements, which yesterday kept the heavens and earth in such hideous commotion, was over and gone. Though it was as cold as in the depths of winter, the sky was almost cloudless; and the sun, already far on his diurnal circuit, was glimmering brightly over the dreary wastes of the snow-covered wilderness. By common consent, they then packed up, and immediately commenced beating their slow and toilsome way towards the nearest habitation, which was that of the old chief, now only about five miles distant, over land, on the shore of the lake below. With far less fatigue and other suffering, save that of hunger, than they had anticipated, they reached the hospitable cabin of Wenongonet before night. Here their wants were supplied; here an earnest discussion--in which they were aided by the shrewd surmises of the chief--was held, respecting the burning of their camp and the probable loss of their common property; and, finally, here, though the "_Light of the Lodge_" was absent at her city home, they were agreeably entertained through the night and succeeding day,--when, the lakes having become frozen over sufficiently strong to make travelling on the ice as safe as it was convenient and easy, they, on the second morning after their arrival at his house, bade their entertainer good-by, and set out for their homes in the settlement, which they respectively reached by daylight, to the great relief of their anxious and now overjoyed families and friends. CHAPTER XVI. "There was a laughing devil in his sneer, That rais'd emotions both of hate and fear." In the early part of an appointed day, about a fortnight after the return of the imperilled and unfortunate trappers to their homes, as described in the preceding chapter, an unusual gathering of men was to be seen within and around a building whose barn, open shed, watering-trough, and sign-post, showed its aspirations to be a tavern, occupying a central position among a small, scattering group of primitive-looking houses, situated on the banks of the Androscoggin, five miles below that lake, and where it might be considered as fairly under way, as an uninterrupted river, in its devious course to the ocean.