“Lizzy! Come up here!”

I plunged through the waist-high drifts and joined him. Silently he pointed.

A hundred yards away, nestled against the protecting hill, facing the lake, was a small log cabin.

The door wasn’t even locked. There was a hasp, but only a forked stick held it closed. We pried the heavy door open and peered inside.

The room, which was small, had two bunks at one end. A pot-bellied stove was in the center. A pipe, supported by baling wire, was suspended across the room. There were three windows, all shuttered. The shadows were dark and gloomy.

I was furious. “We should have looked farther! I was stupid! We lay there in the snow all that time and nearly died while the cabin was right here!”

“You couldn’t have known,” Tim said. He found, now that his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, a kerosene lantern which was almost full. He struck a match, lit it, and we were able to see, in the pale yellow light, the treasure trove we had stumbled onto.

There were blankets and tools—an axe, a saw, even an awl, were piled in a heap near the door. Shelves which ringed the room were piled with canned goods and boxes of staple goods. One wall was almost completely covered with stretched hides. Tim examined them. “These are this year’s catch,” he said. “This is a trapper’s cabin.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Maybe the storm caught him out on his line, and he’s waiting it out. Or he may have taken a load down to the buyers.”

I looked around. It was all too much for me, and I began to cry. Tim looked away. “Come on, come on.”

“Look!” I cried. “There’s sugar, ten whole pounds. And salt. And flour.”

“It doesn’t belong to us,” he pointed out.

“No; we’ll pay for everything we use. The trapper is bound to be back today or tomorrow, and he can help us get home. Tim, we don’t have to go back in the woods anymore!”

I saw that realization dawn in his eyes.

“You start a fire,” he said. “I’ll go and get our gear.”

He left, and I opened the stove door. There was a fire already laid, with kindling and twisted birch bark. One strike of a match and in minutes the flames were dancing. I closed the flue halfway so as not to send all our heat up the stove pipe, and began to look around again.

Whoever lived there was a large man. Near one of the bunks there was a boot into which I could have put both my feet. He was a neat man, too. The cabin was spick and span. All of his clothes were hung neatly on nails. The cabin was snug; all of the chinks had been filled in with moss and mud. I opened the cupboard and found plates and knives and forks. There was a large, black skillet hanging on one wall and near it two pots and a square pan for baking bread. The canned goods were mostly fruit. Our host apparently lived off the land, except for something to stuff his sweet tooth with. There was a large bag of dried beans and another with dried green peas. I immediately put some of them in a pot and went out and filled it with snow, then put it on the stove to melt. Green pea soup would be a welcome change.