“Well, we can’t stand much more like this. We’ll have to stop and try to do something--rig a windbreak, maybe.” “And freeze?” Sam’s eye rested for an instant on the laboring Poke. “Perhaps we can get a fire going. Anyway, we’ve got----” There he broke off, amazed by the eagerness with which the Shark was rubbing his glasses with gloved fingers. “What is it?” Sam asked in haste. Out shot the Shark’s arm. “Look yourself! There’s something yonder! Oh, if only----” But his speech was drowned by a jubilant shout. In spite of the driving snow, and in spite, too, of a veil of intervening branches, Sam had made out a chimney and the shoulder of a steep roof. CHAPTER XXVI OLD FRIENDS MEET Down the slope rushed the boys like charging troops bursting into an enemy’s stronghold. Cold and weariness were forgotten. They dashed through drifts; they broke through thickets; they swung themselves over the ruins of an ancient rail-fence. Then they were in a clearing, and hurling themselves at the door of a little house, against which the snow lay banked to the window sills. Sagging hinges and rusted bolt gave before the attack. The door yielded, and in poured the club like an irresistible tide. Once within the shelter, however, the boys pulled up abruptly, glancing about them with expressions portraying wonder and disappointment. At a glance it was plain that the house had not been tenanted for a long time. The room in which they found themselves was fairly large, but bare of furnishings, unless a broken chair, an empty box and a strip of ragged carpet in one corner could be so described. A great fireplace at one end yawned cold and empty. Dust and cobwebs were everywhere, and such light as sifted into the place came through breaks in the windows rather than through the grimy panes remaining intact. Overhead was a ceiling of rough boards, through whose cracks much snow had sifted, testifying to the condition of the roof; while beneath each window a considerable bank of snow had formed. The walls gave protection, in a measure, from the blasts, but the air had a damp chill more paralyzing than the cutting wind. Sam was the first to rise to the situation. “Here, fellows, we’ve got to have a fire!” he sang out. “Herman, take that axe of yours and go for the old rails in the fence. Step and Trojan, go with him, and mind you lug in the driest stuff you can find--if there is anything dry. Shark, help Poke out of his snow-shoes. Now, Orkney”--he turned to the silent Tom--“you and I’ll tackle the fine work. Got any matches?” Orkney drew a handful from his pocket. “Lucky I was cookee at No. 1,” said he. “Had to look after the fires, you know.”