of butter.  Hung on a nail in the corner above the chest was a once-stylish skillet and the battered lower part of a double boiler.  A rusty tincup lay on the floor beside a powder can that had been used for a bucket, while just inside the south door stood a comical homemade shakedown.  The frame was built of straight young aspen poles, while the springs were just a carefully woven layer of balsam boughs spread over a bottom of limber young saplings.  It had once been a wonder of comfort and ease, but its value had passed with the departure of its builder.

The trail ran close in front of the door and then climbed over the sandy base of a great crag, and disappeared over the hill.  Just as it left the level of the house and started upward, there stood an immense Douglas spruce like some faithful guard, his proud green helmet stretched up into the sky so that he might be the more able to see any approaching danger.  A great smoke-stained rock lay just at the end of the house, before which was built a primitive fireplace.  An assortment of tin cans, lying in the little ravine, told the simple tale of bygone campfire suppers and of hunters and explorers and miners.

“Well, this is what I call luck—­pure, unadulterated luck, with sugar on it,” drawled Ham as he surveyed the house.

“Luck, your grandmother,” said Phil.  “Do you call something that you have been searching for for four long days luck?”

“Excuse me,” answered Ham, in mock courtesy.  “I forgot when I made that statement that there is no such thing as luck.  It was my old friend, ‘William Shakespeare,’ that wrote that famous line about luck, ’Luck is pluck in action,’ or something like that, wasn’t it?  That’s what it was here, anyway.”

“Well, at any rate,” said Mr. Allen, as he joined the group after his round of inspection, “the old shanty is chucked full of possibilities.”

“I’m glad something is full,” interrupted Fat.  “We certainly aren’t in the same class, that cabin and I. It’s been so long since I’ve fed that my floating ribs have run ashore.  The worst of it is that all I have left is a can of condensed milk, about a teaspoon of sugar, and a little butter that’s a second cousin to what’s in that grub box yonder.  I’m going to borrow a few possibilities from the cabin and beg for food.  Let’s have dinner.”

“Right here by this old rock,” called Willis.  “Perhaps we can roast a little information out of these rocks.”

Chuck had gone down stream into a grove of large aspens, and at this moment came panting up the trail.

“Bees—­peach of a tree—­honey galore—­millions of them!” he panted.

“That sounds like something to eat,” cried Fat.  “Come along, Chuck, I’m with you.  Do you know how to make that ‘milk and honey’ that the Good Book speaks about?  I’ve got the milk, let’s get the honey.”  Ham, Chuck, and Fat started for the bee tree, Ham singing his favorite, “A Preacher went a Huntin’.”