bank and am standing on what appears to be a narrow shelf along the face of this bank, or hill. And the snow isn't drifted here. Come down."

"Oh, I wouldn't dare!" cried Lluella.

"If the place will afford us any shelter from this awful wind, why not?" demanded Helen. "We might try it."

"How deep are you down, Jennie?" asked Madge.

"Only a few feet. You couldn't ever haul me up, anyway," and the stout girl laughed, hysterically. "You know how heavy I am."

"Let me try it," said Ruth, eagerly. "Here's where Jennie slid over. Look out, below!"

"Oh, come on! you can't hurt me," declared the stout one, and in a moment Ruth had slipped over the edge of the bank and had landed beside Heavy.

"It's all right, girls!" shouted Ruth at once. She could see that the shelf widened a little way beyond, and was overhung by a huge boulder in the bank, making a really admirable shelter--not exactly a cave, but a large-sized cavity.

After some urging, Lluella and Belle allowed themselves to be lowered by Madge and Helen over the brink of the bank. Then Helen herself slid down, and then the oldest girl. When Miss Steele landed upon the shelf beside them, she cried:

"This is just a mercy! Another five minutes up there in the wind and snow, and I don't believe I could have walked at all. My, my! ain't I cold!"

The six girls cowered together under the overhanging rock. The snow blew in a thick cloud over their heads and they heard it sifting down through the trees below them. They were upon a steep side-hill--the wall of a steep gully, perhaps. How deep it was they had no means of knowing; but several good-sized trees sprouted out of the hill near their refuge. They could see the dim forms of these now and then as the snow-cloud changed.

But although they were out of the beat of the storm, they grew no warmer. More than Madge Steele complained of the cold within the next few minutes. Ruth, indeed, felt her extremities growing numb. The terrible, biting frost was gradually overcoming them, now that they were no longer fighting the blast. Exertion had fought this deadly coldness off; but Ruth Fielding knew that their present inaction was beckoning the approach of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XXII

THE HIDEOUT

Helen had drawn close to her chum and they sat upon the pile of leaves that had blown into this lair under the bank, with their arms about each other's waists.

"What do you suppose will become of us, Ruthie?" Helen whispered.

"Why, how can we tell? Maybe the boys and Long Jerry are searching for us right now----"

"In this dreadful storm? Impossible!" declared Helen.

"Well, that they _will_ search for us as soon as it holds up, we can be sure," Ruth rejoined.

"But, in the meantime? They may be hours finding us. And I am sure I would not know how to start for Snow Camp, if the storm should stop."

"Quite true, Helen."

"We won't an-n-ny of us start for Snow Camp again!" quavered Lluella Fairfax. "We'll be frozen dead--that's what'll happen to us."

"I _am_ dreadfully cold," said Madge. "How are you, Heavy?"

"Stiff as a poker, thank you!" returned the irrepressible. "I haven't any feet at all now. They've frozen and dropped off!"

"Don't talk so terribly!" wailed Belle. "We are freezing to death here. I am sleepy. I've read that when folks get drowsy out in a storm like this they are soon done for. Now, isn't that a fact, Madge Steele?"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the older girl; but Heavy broke in with:

"It strikes me that now is the time to make use of Ruth's matches. Let's build a rousing fire."

"How?" demanded Helen. "Where can we get fuel? It's all under the snow."

"There's plenty of kindling right under _us_" declared Jennie Stone, vigorously. "And Ruth spoke about the under branches of these trees being dry----"

"And so they are," declared Ruth, struggling to her feet. "We must do something. A rousing fire against this rock will keep us warm. We can heat the rock and then draw the fire out and get behind it. It will be fine!"

"Oh, I can't move!" wailed Lluella.

"Luella doesn't want to work," said Madge. "But you get up and do your share, Miss! If you freeze to death here your mother will never forgive me."

Of course, it would be Heavy that got into trouble. She made a misstep off the platform and sunk to her arm-pits in a soft bank of snow, and it was all the others could do to pull her out. But this warmed them, and actually got them to laughing.

"I believe that laughing warms one as much as anything," said Madge.

"Ha, ha!" croaked Heavy, grimly. "_Your_ laughing hasn't warmed _me_ any. I'm wet to my waist, I do believe!"

"We shall have to have a fire now to dry Jennie," said Ruth. "Now take care."

They had all abandoned their snowshoes long since, and the racquettes would have been of no use to them in the present emergency, anyway. But Ruth and Madge got to the nearest tree, and fortunately it was half dead. They could break off many of the smaller branches, and soon brought to the platform a great armful of the brush.

Ruth's matches were dry and they heaped up the leaves and rubbish and started a blaze. The other girls brought more fuel and soon a hot fire was leaping against the side of the rock and its circle of warmth cheered them. They got green branches of spruce and pine and brushed away the snow and banked it up in a wall all about the platform, which served them for a camp. Then they scraped the fire out from the rock, threw on more branches (for the green ones would burn now that the fire was so hot) and crowded in between the blaze and the rock.

"This is just scrumptious!" declared Heavy. "We sha'n't freeze now."

"Not if we can keep the fire going," said Helen.

Being warm, they all tried to be cheerful thereafter. They told stories, they sang their school songs, and played guessing games.

Meanwhile, the wind shrieked through the forest above their "hideout," and the snow continued to fall as though it had no intention of ever stopping. The hours dragged by toward dark--and an early dark it would be on this stormy day.

"Oh, if we only had something to eat!" groaned Heavy. "Wish I'd saved my snow-shoes."

"What for?" demanded Bell. "What possible good could they have been to you, silly?"

"They were strung with deer-hide, and I have heard that when castaway sailors get very, very hungry, they always chew their boots. I can't spare my boots," quoth Jennie Stone, trying to joke to the bitter end.

The wind wheezed above them, the darkness fell with the snow. Beyond the glow of the pile of coals on the rocky ledge, the curtain of snow looked gray--then drab--then actually black. Moon and stars were far, far away; none of their light percolated through the mass of clouds and falling snow that mantled these big wastes of the backwoods.

"Oh! I never realized anything could be so lonely," whispered Helen in Ruth's ear.

"And how worried your father and Mrs. Murchiston will be," returned her chum. "Of course, we shall get out of it all right, Helen; but _did_ you ever suppose so much snow could fall at one time?"

"Never!"

"And no sign of it holding up at all," said Madge, who had overheard.

"Sh! Belle and Lluella have curled up here and gone to sleep," said Helen.

"Lucky Infants," observed Madge.

"I'm going to sleep, too," said Heavy, with a yawn.

"There is no danger now. We're as warm as can be here," Ruth said. "Why don't you take a nap, Helen? Madge and I will keep the first watch--and keep the fire burning."

"Suppose there should be wolves--or bears," whispered Helen.

"Ridiculous! no self-respecting beast would be out in such a gale. They'd know better," declared Madge Steele, briskly.