114 Northern Trails. Book I 
In the lee of a low-branched spruce they stopped 
again, as though by a common impulse, while Noel 
lifted his hands. “ Thanks, thanks, Keesuolukh ; we can 
take care of ourselves now,” the brave little heart was 
singing under the upstretched arms. Then they tum¬ 
bled into the snow and lay for a moment utterly relaxed, 
like two tired animals, in that brief, delicious rest which 
follows a terrible struggle with the storm and cold. 
First they ate a little of their bread and fish to keep 
up their spirits; then — for the storm that was upon 
them might last for days — they set about preparing 
a shelter. With a little search, whooping to each other 
lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that 
some gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. 
While Mooka scurried about, collecting birch bark and 
armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off his snow-shoes 
and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in 
a semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half- 
hour he had a deep hole there, with the snow banked 
up around it to the height of his head. Next with his 
knife he cut a lot of light poles and scrub spruces and, 
sticking the butts in his snowbank, laid the tops, like 
the sticks of a wigwam, firmly against the big stub. A 
few armfuls of spruce boughs shingled over this roof, 
and a few minutes’ work shoveling snow thickly upon 
them to hold them in place and to make a warm cover¬ 
ing; then a doorway, or rather a narrow tunnel, just 
