Being a level-headed and cool lad, Snap soon realised that he had outrun his friends, and that they had (thanks to the darkness) missed his trail and lost him. He had often read of lonely nights in the forest, and envied the heroes of the story, but somehow he did not care about the reality as much as he had expected. The typical 'leather-stocking,' he remembered, always had matches, made a fire and sometimes a bush shelter, lit a pipe, and ate pemmican. Now Snap felt that, though extremely hot now, he would soon be bitterly cold, but he had no matches, did not know how to build a shelter, had no pemmican, and did not smoke. As for that buffalo robe, of which so much is always made in dear old Fenimore Cooper's books, there might be one within a few miles, but if so its four-footed owner was probably still wearing it. Snap remembered that a trapper who had no matches rubbed bits of wood together until he had got a light by friction. This was a happy thought, and, taking out his knife, he carefully cut a couple of pieces of dry pine from a stump hard by, and then collected as big a bundle as possible of twigs and dead wood, which he deposited on a spot previously cleared of snow. Then he rubbed the wood, and rubbed the wood, and continued to rub the wood, but nothing came of it. Presently he tried a new piece; rub, rub, rub, he went, and a large drop of perspiration dropped off the tip of his nose with a little splash quite audible in the intense stillness. Then he gave it up, voted Fenimore Cooper a fraud, or at any rate came to the conclusion that his receipts for kindling fire were not sufficiently explicit.