When the boy regained consciousness, daylight was creeping into the cavern through an opening much lower down than the one by which the boys had entered the upper cavern.

The earth outside was covered with a thick mat of snow, and the trees and shrubs of the forest were bending beneath burdens of pure white.

The fire had burned to ashes and it was miserably cold.

The Little Brass God was gone!

CHAPTER VII

AN EMPTY CAVERN

Perhaps a dozen yards from the fire, Tommy stumbled at a figure over which the falling snow was fast drifting.  He called out to Sandy, who was only a short distance away, and the two lifted the unconscious form in their arms and staggered toward the fire.

“Why, it’s nothing but a kid!” Sandy exclaimed.

“Don’t you know who it is?” demanded Tommy.

“Never saw him before!” was the reply.

“It’s Thede Carson!”

“Not that little monkey of a Thede Carson who’s always getting the Beaver Patrol into trouble?” demanded Sandy.  “What would he be doing up here?  I guess you’re losing the sense of sight.”

“Sure, it’s Thede Carson,” insisted Tommy.

“Well, I guess he’s about all in,” Sandy volunteered.

“Get busy then, with your first aid,” Tommy ordered.  “Get some of his clothes off and get to work with snow, or his fingers and toes will drop off as soon as they thaw out.”

“I don’t believe it’s the cold so much as it is exhaustion,” Sandy ventured.  “He seems to have been running a whole lot, for he’s still panting, I reckon he just dropped down when he couldn’t run any further.”

“I guess that’s about right,” Tommy admitted.  “He doesn’t seem to be very cold.  It may be that wound on his head,” the lad added, pointing to a long gash in the scalp which, judging from the state of the lad’s clothing, had bled very freely.

“What do you think of coming away up here in the Hudson Bay country and picking a member of the Beaver Patrol right out of the woods?” demanded Sandy.  “We seem to find Boy Scouts wherever we go.”

The boys worked over the exhausted lad some moments, and then he opened his eyes.

“Now for the love of Mike!” exclaimed Tommy, “don’t look around and say ‘Where am I?’ The correct thing to say in these modern days is ‘Vot iss?’ Do you get me, Thede?”

“Why, it’s Tommy!” said the boy.

“Betcher life!” returned Tommy.  “Did you run all the way up here from Clark street?  Or did you come up in an aeroplane?”

Thede sat up and looked about for the tents and the boats.

“Why, this isn’t the camp!” he said.

“We haven’t got any more camp than a rabbit!” declared Sandy.  “We’re lost!  We’ve got to wait till morning to find our way back.”

“It’s a good thing you’re lost!” exclaimed Thede.  “I don’t think I could have held out until I reached the camp.  You see,” he went on with a slight shudder at the recollection of his experiences, “I left George a long distance off.”