'I know as your heart is strong enough, little 'un,' said Dick, 'but your legs have struck work. Just you lie right here with your brother while I look around for some'at to eat. There's some matches, Frank; see if you can make up a little fire;' and, so saying, Wharton left them. After an absence of nearly an hour, during which Frank had contrived to kindle a fire with grass and twigs and game droppings, and his brother had fallen into a heavy, dreamless sleep, old Wharton returned. Putting his hand into his shirt front he drew out about a dozen roots, like small turnips. These he laid down by the fireside, and after trimming them a little with his knife made a place for them in the hot ashes, and set them therein to cook. 'Them's _pommes blanches_, Frank,' said Dick, 'leastways that's what the Crows call 'em. I reckon they learnt it from the French Canadians. Turnips I call 'em, and mighty good they are. Try one.' Frank wanted no second invitation--cooked and uncooked was much the same to him; anything would not come amiss which would fill up the terrible vacuum which he felt inside him. 'Shall I wake the young 'un, Dick?' he asked. 'No, let him sleep a bit. When these things are cooked a bit we'll wake him. He would make himself ill, bolting these _pommes blanches_ raw, if you woke him now.' 'Yes,' assented Frank, 'poor old Towzer! I expect, if he dined with an ostrich to-day, he would eat his share even of mashed soda-water bottles!' 'His share!' exclaimed Wharton, 'he'd starve that ostrich.' By-and-by, the _pommes blanches_ being cooked, they woke the younger Winthrop, and, if they did not manage to satisfy his appetite, at any rate they finished the roots. 'Aren't there any more, Dick?' he asked. 'Not for supper,' replied the old man firmly. 'Well, then, let's begin breakfast, it is nearly morning,' urged the boy. 'No, no, sonny, we'll all go to sleep now if you please, and to-morrow we'll begin to work our way back to Rosebud,' said Wharton, and, suiting the action to the word, he lay down where he was, and slept or pretended to sleep. When the boys opened their eyes it was broad daylight. Birds and insects hung over the pool, beasts had been down to it to drink in the night and had turned away frightened and disgusted at the human taint in the air. The hum and stir of life was all around them. It was quiet, perhaps, for earth, but how different from that dead, appalling silence through which they had sailed but yesterday! Frank almost wondered that the very sun's rays were not chilled and blighted in passing through so drear a region.