Now I hurried to bring wood and twigs, and having made a hearth of green sticks, which I cut with my ax, I built a fire in this snowy fire-place. Mrs. Lecks, Mrs. Aleshine, and Ruth had been watching my proceedings with great interest; and when the fire began to burn, and the smoke to go out of my chimney, the coach door was opened, and the genial heat gradually pervaded the vehicle. "Upon my word," exclaimed Mrs. Aleshine, "if that isn't one of the brightest ideas I ever heard of! A fire in the middle of a snow-bank, with a man there a-tendin' to it, an' a chimney! 'T isn't every day that you can see a thing like that!" "I should hope not," remarked Mrs. Lecks, "for if the snow drifted this way every day, I'd be ready to give up the seein' business out-an'-out! But I think, Mr. Craig, you ought to pass that shovel in to us so that we can dig you out when the fire begins to melt your little house and it all caves in on you." "You can have the shovel," said I, "but I don't believe this snow-bank will cave in on me. Of course the heat will melt the snow, but I think it will dissolve gradually, so that the caving in, if there is any, won't be of much account, and then we shall have a big open space here in which we can keep up our fire." "Oh, dear!" exclaimed Ruth, "you talk as if you expected to stay here ever so long, and we certainly can't do that. We should starve to death, for one thing." "Don't be afraid of that," said Mrs. Aleshine. "There's plenty of victuals to last till the people come for us. When I pack baskets for travelin' or picnickin', I don't do no scrimpin'. An' we've got to keep up a fire, you know, for it wouldn't be pleasant for those men, when they've cut a way up the mountain to git at us, to find us all froze stiff." Mrs. Lecks smiled. "You're awful tender of the feelin's of other people, Barb'ry," she said, "and a heart as warm as yourn ought to keep from freezin'." "Which it has done, so far," said Mrs. Aleshine complacently. As I had expected, the water soon began to drip from the top and the sides of my cavern, and the chimney rapidly enlarged its dimensions. I made a passage for the melted snow to run off into a hollow, back of the coach; and as I kept up a good strong fire, the drops of water and occasional pieces of snow which fell into it were not able to extinguish it. The cavern enlarged rapidly, and in a little more than an hour the roof became so thin that while I was outside collecting wood it fell in and extinguished the fire. This accident, however, interrupted my operations but for a short time. I cleared away the snow at the bottom of the excavation, and rebuilt my fire on the bare ground. The high snow walls on three sides of it protected it from the wind, so that there was no danger of the flames being blown against the stage-coach, while the large open space above allowed a free vent for the smoke.