Once more they disposed themselves before the cheerful blaze, the dog stretching out at full length to dry his shaggy coat that was wet with melting snow. “I wonder what sort of a place this was?” spoke Jack, at length. “Must have been a hunter’s cabin,” suggested Tom. “It’s too big for that. This looks as though people had lived in it once,” declared Bert. “Besides, it’s too near the road for a hunter to want to use it. I guess the family died off, or moved away, and there isn’t enough population up here to make it so crowded that they have to use this shack.” “Well, it comes in handy for us,” remarked George. “I could go another sandwich, but----” “All the going you’ll do will be to go without,” laughed Bert, grimly. “There isn’t a crumb left, but I could manage to squeeze out some more coffee.” “Better save it for morning,” advised Tom. “We’ll need it worse by then.” The storm still raged, but inside the deserted cabin the boys were fairly comfortable. They had on thick, warm garments, and these, with the glowing fire, made them feel little of the nipping cold that prevailed with the blizzard. The wind howled down the chimney, scattering the light ashes now and then, and filling the room with the pungent odor of smoke. Around some of the windows, where the rags were stuffed in the broken panes, little piles of sifted snow gathered. At times the whole frail structure shook with the force of the blast, and at such times the boys would look at each other with a trace of fear on their faces. For the ramshackle structure might fall down on them. But as it did not, after each recurrent windy outburst, they felt more confident. Perhaps the cabin was built stronger than they thought. The dog showed no uneasiness at these manifestations of Nature. He did not even open his eyes when the wind howled its loudest and blew its strongest. And, too, he seemed to have gotten over the strange fear that caused him to act so oddly. The other boys had rather laughed at Jack’s “notion” of being “spied upon,” but had they been able to see through the white veil of snow that was falling all about the cabin, they would have realized that there is sometimes something like telepathy, or second sight. For, in reality, the boys were being observed by a pair of evil eyes. And the evil eyes were set in an evil face, which, in turn belonged to the body of a man who had constructed for himself a rude shelter against the storm. It was such a shelter as would be hastily built by a hunter caught in the open for the night--a sort of “lean-to,” with the open side away from the direction in which the wind blew. But it could not have been made in this storm, and, consequently, must have been put up before the blizzard began. The lean-to showed signs of a practiced hand, for it was fairly comfortable, and the man in it chuckled to himself now and then as he looked over toward the deserted cabin.