But during the night the wind changed, and the following morning the sun rose in a brilliantly blue sky. Directly after an early breakfast Ross started to shovel a way out of the cabin. He dug the snow away from the door and windows, and then turned his attention to the trail leading to the tunnel. Here he found that the wind had favored him, sweeping the path clean and filling up the hollows. In the valley the snow lay seven feet deep. Ross worked his way to the ore-dump, at the base of which he paused to look down on the McKenzies. Their cabin was also released from the snow as to door and window. The snow was also tramped and shoveled around the discovery hole, but no one was in sight, and Ross had turned again to his task when a yell caused him again to face the McKenzie cabin. Sandy was gesticulating frantically while he advanced rapidly on snow-shoes, dodging the trees as he came diagonally across the mountainside. He came on, talking at the top of his voice, but all Ross could catch was "sticks" and "thief" and "trail." Sandy was plainly excited. His neckerchief was knotted under one ear; his coat was buttoned up awry; his cap was on with one ear-flap dangling, and the other held fast by the rim of the cap. His ears and nose were scarlet, the thermometer registering, that morning, thirty below zero. "Our dynamite is gone," Sandy yelled when he was near enough to make Ross understand. "Gone--stolen." Ross stared at him stupidly. "Who is there to take it?" "Some one," panted Sandy with an oath, "must have come up the trail Sunday and taken the stuff, thinkin' that it 'ud storm right off and shut up the trail so none of us 'ud be such fools as t' go over t' Camp after more. That's the way I've figured it out, and I lay ye I'm right." "When did you find out the sticks were gone?" asked Ross with an interest which did not as yet reach beyond Sandy. "A few minutes ago," gasped Sandy. "I come as fast as I could to see if your----" Ross cut him short with a loud exclamation, and without waiting to hear the end of the sentence turned and plunged up over the dump, ploughing and fighting his way through the snow as though it were a thing of life. Sandy picked up the wooden shovel which the boy had cast away, and followed out of breath, but still talking. "You know we kept the sticks in a box under a hemlock right above the hole, and----" Ross, unheeding, floundered across the dump, and began to dig wildly at the tool-house door, only the upper part of which was visible. With set teeth he dug, forgetting Sandy, forgetting the shovel, his common sense swallowed up in a panic of fear. Weimer had always kept the dynamite sticks in a box, a large double boarded and heavily lidded affair which was set in the corner of the tool chest furthest from the door.