cutting snow. When they rose at daylight they were nearly buried
in drifts, although their camp was in a dense, sheltered thicket.
Guided wholly by the compass they travelled again, but blinded by
the whirling white they stumbled and blundered into endless
difficulties and made but poor headway. After dragging the
toboggan for three hours, taking turns at breaking the way, they
were changing places when Rolf noticed a large gray patch on
Quonab's cheek and nose.

"Quonab, your face is frozen," he said.

"So is yours," was the reply.

Now they turned aside, followed a hollow until they reached a
spruce grove, where they camped and took an observation, to learn
that the compass and they held widely different views about the
direction of travel. It was obviously useless to face the storm.
They rubbed out their frozen features with dry snow and rested by
the fire.

No good scout seeks for hardship; he avoids the unnecessary trial
of strength and saves himself for the unavoidable. With zero
weather about them and twenty-four hours to wait in the storm,
the scouts set about making themselves thoroughly comfortable.

With their snowshoes they dug away the snow in a circle a dozen
feet across, piling it up on the outside so as to make that as
high as possible. When they were

down to the ground, the wall of snow around them was five feet