The boys sat before the fire until midnight listening for the return of their chum.  When it began to snow they reluctantly decided that George had crawled into some temporary shelter for the night and would not think of trying to make his way home through the storm.

“You boys go to bed now,” Will advised, “and I’ll sit up and keep watch.  If you hear me firing how and then, don’t think the camp’s been attacked.  George may be lost in the woods, and I’ll be doing that to give him the right direction.”

“We should have done that before,” Tommy suggested.

“Well, get to bed,” Will urged, “and I’ll run the camp till morning.”

Tommy and Sandy crawled into the tent which stood nearest to the great campfire and cuddled up in the warm blankets.

“Do you believe Will will stay in camp until morning?” asked Tommy.

“Of course I don’t,” was the reply.  “He’ll wait until we’re asleep, and then he’ll go prowling around the camp in search of George.”

“That’s just about what he’ll do.”

“What’s your idea, then?” asked Sandy.

“Well,” Tommy whispered, “George may be out in the snow somewhere, and it won’t take us very long to circle about the camp just to make sure.”

“I got you!” replied Sandy.  “We’ll get out under the back wall, and take a little trip with our searchlights.”

Half an hour later, when Will, heavily wrapped, glanced in at the tent preparatory to going out on his quiet search for the missing chum, ho saw that the blankets were empty.

“The little scamps?” he chuckled.  “They’ve beaten me to it!”

In the meantime, Tommy and Sandy were making their way through the wilderness traveling in the narrow light provided by the electrics.  By this time the snow was quite deep, and the wind appeared to be rising every minute.

“We never can get home in this storm if we once lose sight of the campfire,” Tommy said as the two huddled together in the lee of a big tree.

“That’s a fact!” Sandy admitted.  “So I guess we’d better be poking along.  Which way is the fire?”

“Why, it ought to be right over there!” replied Tommy doubtfully.

“Over where?” demanded Sandy, with a note of alarm in his voice.

“Blessed if I know!” declared Tommy, sitting flat down in the snow.

The boys walked round and round the tree and made little excursions in every direction without getting a single trace of the campfire.

“I guess we’ve gone and done it now!” Tommy grunted.

“Aw, we can find our way back all right enough!” Sandy declared.  “We came north when we left the camp, didn’t we?”

“Guess we did,” replied Tommy, his teeth rattling with the cold.

“Then all we’ve got to do is to follow the wind and we’ll strike the tents.  That’s some Boy Scout forestry sense, isn’t it?”

“We’ll wait until we see whether it brings us back to camp or not,” replied Tommy.  “If it does, it’s all right; if it doesn’t, it’s all wrong.”