“The fire, Peter!” snapped Paul. “Jump!” Peter needed no urging. With eager intensity they all flung themselves at their work, the bed, the fire, the supper, wood for the night, and a shelter against the impending storm. It was a race for life with the swift-coming night, for night finding them unprepared meant death to some of them, perhaps to all. They each knew their special tasks and with swift despatch they went at their work. While Paul was slashing down the underbrush, Peter having gathered a large pile of dry brushwood was digging out with a frying pan a large circular space some seven feet in diameter. This done he proceeded to pile his brushwood in the circular space he had cleared, and soon he had a fire blazing under which the snow rapidly melted away. Then, seizing the axe which Paul had laid aside, he went off for more wood. There could not be too much wood with a storm blowing up, for if the storm became a blizzard wood meant life. Meantime, with saplings stripped bare of their branches and the trees standing thick about, Paul was constructing a shelter as near the fire as was safe, weaving the branches thatchwise till a fairly thick semi-circular brushwood wall stood about the fire. Around this shelter he would stretch later a strip of canvas and some soft deer skins which were still in the toboggan. An hour’s strenuous work saw a crude but fairly substantial brushwood built on three sides of the deep circular hollow from which the fire had partially melted the snow. Clearing from this hollow space the melted slush Paul proceeded to bank the sides high with the softened snow which almost immediately was frozen into a solid mass impervious to wind. Upon the space thus cleared, he placed a thick layer of balsam boughs. These he covered over with a fur rug. “Now, Mammy! There you are!” he cried cheerily. “In you go. We will have supper in no time.” Painfully the woman dragged herself out of the toboggan and seated herself in the shelter. “Now, then, Tanna, you have the water ready?” “Soon, Paul, I think,” said the child, who had meantime been nursing a small fire under a pail of melted snow. “You go for the wood,” she added, “we can do the rest.” “Look out for the fire then,” said Paul. “I will watch her,” said the woman. “You can go for the wood. Get plenty; we may need much.” “You need not fear for me,” said the girl. “I have no eyes in my head, but my fingers are as good as eyes.” For a few moments Paul stood watching. “Yes! You are a wonder, little one,” he said in a low voice, touched with pity. The girl lifted her face to him, showing two large blue eyes whose lustre was dimmed with a scarcely perceptible film. But though the blue of the eye was somewhat dimmed the spirit that shone through the face was one of untamed invincibility. “Go, Paul,” said the woman. “She is quite safe.” She paused, then added with infinite sadness in her voice, “While she has me she is safe.”