“Here’s enough of both lead and powder to last us throughout the winter, whatever may happen,” said Robert in a tone of intense satisfaction.  “Tayoga, you’re certainly a master freebooter.  You couldn’t have made a more useful capture.”

Each, after the invariable custom of hunters and scouts, carried bullet molds, and they were soon at work, melting the lead and casting bullets for their rifles, then pouring the shining pellets in a stream into their pouches.  They continued at the task from day to day until all the lead was turned into bullets and then they began work on another pair of snowshoes, these intended for Robert.

Despite the safety and comfort of their home in the rock, both began to chafe now, and time grew tremendously long.  They had done nearly everything they could do for themselves, and life had become so easy that there was leisure to think and be restless, because they were far away from great affairs.

“When my snowshoes are finished and I perfect myself in the use of them,” said Robert, “I favor an attempt to escape on the ice and snow to the south.  We grow rusty, you and I, here, Tayoga.  The war may be decided in our absence and I want to see Dave, too.  I want to hear him tell how he got through the savage cordon to the lake.”

“Have no fear about the war, Dagaeoga,” said the Onondaga.  “It will not be ended this winter nor the next.  Before there is peace between the French king and the British king you will have a chance to make many speeches.  Yet, like you, I think we should go.  It is not well for us to lie hidden in the ground through a whole winter.”

“But when we leave our good home here I shall leave many regrets behind.”

He looked around at the cave and its supplies of skins and furs, its stores of wood and food.  Fortune had helped their own skill and they had made a marvelous change in the place.  Its bleakness and bareness had disappeared.  In the cold and bitter wilderness it offered more than comfort, it was luxury itself.

“So shall I,” said Tayoga, appreciatively, “but we will heap rocks up to the very top of the door, so that only a little air and nothing else can enter, and leave it as it is.  Some day we may want to use it again.”

Having decided to go, they became very impatient, but they did not skimp the work on the snowshoes, knowing how much depended on their strength, but that task too, like all the others, came to an end in time.  Robert practiced a while and they selected a day of departure.  They were to take with them all the powder and bullets, a large supply of food and their heavy bearskin overcoats.  They had also made for themselves over-moccasins of fur and extra deerskin leggings.  They would be bundled up greatly, but it was absolutely necessary in order to face the great cold, that hovered continuously around thirty to forty degrees below zero.  The ear muffs, the caps and the gloves, too, were necessities, but they had the comfort of believing that if the fierce winter presented great difficulties to them, it would also keep their savage enemies in their lodges.