"Yes; they use it whenever they want to; every one who knows about it does. Why?"
"Some one slept in that shack across there—under hardly half a roof and with no door," Loutrelle explained. "I could tell because the fellow burrowed out the snow for his blanket; and he couldn't have had any fire."
"Let me see," Ethel said.
He strapped on her skis and, stepping into his own, he led her to the ruin across the road, where it was plain, as he said, that some one recently had hollowed out the snow and laid a blanket for sleeping; also the some one had eaten there, leaving crumbs of white bread. He had come during the night or, at least, before the snow and the wind ceased; for his trail to the shack was covered; but he had departed that morning on snowshoes, upon which he had progressed badly and directly away from the road into the woods. It was partly from observation of his clumsiness with snowshoes that Ethel said:
"He couldn't have belonged about here. Probably he came over from the railroad to hunt and got lost and just found this place in the dark. He was after fox, maybe."
"I bet he woke up cold," Loutrelle said. "I should think this morning he'd at least have gone over to have a look at the cabin."
Ethel moved away without offering to answer. She did not believe that the man who had slept there in the snow burrow was a hunter; she did not form any idea of who or what he might be except that certainly he was a stranger in the neighborhood. And now a queer, shivery thought possessed her. She did not speak it; but Loutrelle did.
