“’Tain’t worth while, Paul, to talk to Jim Hart,” said Shif’less Sol sadly.  “He ain’t got no soul above a hoe cake.  I’ve allus told you, Paul, that you an’ me wuz superior to our surroundings.  Ef Jim Hart wuz locked up in a schoolhouse all his life he’d never be an eddicated man, while ez fur me, I’m one without ever gittin’ a chance, jest because it’s in my natur’.”

Paul laughed at them both, and drew a little closer to the bed of red coals.  The warmth within and the cold without appealed to all the elements of his vivid and imaginative nature.  Not for worlds would he have missed being on this great adventure with these daring men.

“I’m a-thinkin’,” said Ross, as he lifted the buffalo robe over their door and looked out, “that ez soon ez the wind dies the lake will freeze over.”

“An’ it will be harder than ever then,” said Paul, “to catch fish.”

“I guess we kin do about ez well through holes in the ice,” said Ross.

Ross’s prediction soon came true.  When they awoke on the morning two days afterwards the lake curved about them in a white and glittering sheet, reflecting back a brilliant sun in a million dazzling rays.

“I’m glad all of our party are here on the island together,” said Henry, “because the ice isn’t thick enough to support a man’s weight, and it isn’t thin enough to let a canoe be pushed through it.  We’re clean cut off from the world for a little while.”

“An’ this is whar poor old Long Jim becomes the most vallyble uv us all,” said Jim Hart.  “It’s a lucky thing that I’ve got a kind uv stove an’ buffalo meat an’ venison an’ other kinds uv game.  I’m jest willin’ to bet that you four hulkin’ fellers will want to lay aroun’ an’ eat all the time.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, Jim, if we didn’t get hungry once in a while,” said Henry, with a smile.

Two more days passed, and the ice on the lake neither melted nor grew thicker, and they were as well shut in and others were as well shut out as if they had been on a lone island in the Pacific Ocean.  Once they saw a thin column of smoke, only a faint blue spire very far away, which Henry said rose from an Indian camp fire.

“It’s several miles from here,” he said, “and it’s just chance that they are there.  They don’t dream that we are here.”

Nevertheless, they did not light the fire in their furnace again for two days.  Then, when the skies grew too dark and somber for a faint smoke to show against its background, they kindled it up again, and once more enjoyed warm food.

“Ef I jest had a little coffee, an’ somethin’ to b’il it in, I’d be pow’ful happy,” said Jim Hart.  “I’d jest enjoy b’ilin’ a gallon or two apiece fur you fellers an’ me.”

“Wa’al, ez you ain’t got any coffee an’ you ain’t got anythin’ to b’il it in, I reckon we’ll hev to be jest ez happy without it,” said Shif’less Sol.