noon
The following morning he thought over the situation while he was at work . It was a blind enough situation , but he felt that he ought to repeat to Leslie the scraps of conversation that he had overheard . They might mean much to the boy , and in spite of his reserve and his overbearing manners Ross liked Leslie . At noon he ate dinner hastily , and telling Weimer that he would be back in an hour , set out for the upper claims . Snow had fallen the night before and the trail had filled , making walking tiresome , for Ross had not yet accustomed himself to the use of snow-shoes . With his hands in his pockets and his cap drawn down over his eyes he plunged through the drifts in the teeth of a sharp east wind . Up the side of the mountains he struggled , through the pass between two peaks where Meadow Creek had cut a channel and into a hollow sheltered from the wind and exposed to the sun .