He reclothed his legs, gathered the stiffening claws of the defunct quackers in his left hand, picked up his empty "ole fuzzee," which had done such good service despite its age, and set forth on his return to camp.

Retracing his steps along the bank, after some searching he found the beginning of the trail, and started along it with a know-it-all, cheerful confidence in the little bit of wood-lore which he had acquired. Hence he now found it considerably more difficult to follow the spotted trees. His brain was excited and preoccupied; and when once in fancied security he suffered his eyes and thoughts to stray for a minute from the trail, every unfamiliar woodland sight and sound tempted them to wander farther.

First it was an old fox, which poked its sharp, inquisitive nose out of a patch of undergrowth near at hand. Dol uttered a mad "Whoop-ee!" and heedlessly dashed off a few steps in pursuit. Reynard whisked his brush as much as to say, "You can't get the better of me, stranger!" and defiantly trotted away.

Recovering his senses, the boy managed to recover the trail too, and was keeping to it carefully when a second temptation beset him. A chattering squirrel, seated on the low bough of a maple-tree, with his fore paws against his white breast, his eyes like twinkling beads, and his restless little head playing bo-peep with the intruding boy, began to scold the latter for venturing into his forest playground.

Dol's first thought was full of delighted interest. His second was a sanguinary one; namely, that a pair of ducks would only be one meal for four campers who were "camp-hungry," and that Uncle Eb had spoken of squirrels as "fust-rate eatin'." He handled his gun uncertainly, deliberating whether or not he would load it, and try a shot at the bright-eyed chatterbox.

Before he had decided one way or the other, the squirrel, still scolding and playing bo-peep, scampered off his bough, and up the trunk of the maple. Thence he quickly made good his escape from one tree to another, affording a whisking, momentary view now and again of his white breast or bushy tail. Dol absolutely forgot the blazed trail, forgot the stories which he had heard about forest perils, forgot every earthly thing but his admiration for the pretty, tantalizing fellow; though to do the lad justice, he soon came to the conclusion that the camp must be in a worse strait for want of provisions before he could have the heart to shoot him. He gave chase nevertheless, plunging along in a ziz-zag way over a carpet of moss and dry pine-needles, and through some dense tangles of undergrowth, uttering a welcoming screech whenever he saw the bright eyes of the little trickster peering down at him from a bough.

He had travelled farther than he knew before his interest in the game waned. He began to feel that it was rather beneath the dignity of a fellow who wore moccasins, carried coon-skin pouch and powder-horn, and who was bound for remote solitudes in search of the lordly moose, to be interested in such an insignificant phase of forest life as the doings of a red squirrel.

Then he started back to find the trail. He walked a considerable distance. He searched hither and thither, straining his eyes anxiously through the bewildering gloom of the forest, but never a notched tree could he see. Whereupon Dol Farrar called himself some pretty hard names. He remarked that he had been a "hair-brained fool" and a "greenhorn" ever to leave the spotted track, but that he wasn't going to be "downed;" he would search until he found it.

And he certainly was enough of a greenhorn not to know that every step he now took was carrying him away from the trail, and plunging him into a hopeless, pathless labyrinth of woods. For Dol had lost all knowledge of directions, and was completely "turned round;" which means that he was miserably lost.

The disaster came about in this way. The forest here was very dense, the giant trees interlocked above his head letting so little light filter through their foliage that he could scarcely see twenty yards ahead of him, and that in a puzzling, shadowy gloom resembling an English twilight.

When he ceased chasing the squirrel, he imagined that he retraced his steps directly towards the point where he had quitted the trail. In reality, seeing nothing to aim for in this bewildering maze of endless trees, turned out of his way continually as he dodged in and out around massive trunks, he gradually worked farther and farther off the course by which he had come, drifting in random directions like a rudderless ship on mid-ocean. This helpless state is called, in the phraseology of the northern woods, being "turned round."

But Dol Farrar was spared for the present a thorough realization of the dreadful mishap which had befallen him. He had a shocked, breathless, flurried feeling, as if scales had suddenly fallen from his eyes, and he saw the dangers of the unknown as he had not before seen them. But even in the midst of abusing himself for his rash self-confidence, he uttered a cheerful "Hurrah!"

"Why, good gracious!" he cried. "Here's another trail! Now, where on earth does this lead to? I don't see any spotted trees"—looking carefully about—"but it's a well-beaten track, a regular plain path, where people have been walking. It must lead to our camp. I'll follow it up, anyhow. That will be better than dodging around here until I get 'wheels in my head,' as Uncle Eb says he did once when he lost his way in the woods, and kept wandering round and round in a circle."

Puffing with excitement and revived hope, the boy started off on this new trail, which he blessed at first—oh, how he blessed it!—as if it had been a golden clew to lead him out of his difficulty. To be sure, it was not a blazed trail; there were no notches in the trees, but the ground showed distinct signs of being frequently and recently travelled over. Though footprints were not traceable, moss, earth, and in some places the forest undergrowth of dwarfed bushes, were thoroughly pressed and trodden.

Dol never doubted but that it was a human trail, a track continually used by some woodsman; but he thought that the unknown traveller, whoever he was, must have agile legs and a taste for athletics, for many times he had to hoist himself, his gun, and the ducks over some big windfall which lay right across the way. The dead quackers he pitched before him, fearing that by the time he got back to camp—if ever he did?—their flesh would be too bruised to look like respectable meat; for he was obliged to have one hand free to help him in scrambling over each fallen tree.

Once or twice this strange trail led him through thickets where the bushes grew so high as to lash his face. He came to regard slippery, projecting roots and rough stones, which galled his feet, protected only by the thin soles of his moccasins, as matters of course. His wind decreased, and his blessings ceased. Yet he followed on, walking, walking, interminably walking, with now and again an interval of climbing or stumbling headlong, accompanied by ejaculations of thankfulness that his gun was not loaded.

His breath came in hot, strangling gasps, the veins in his head were swollen and stinging like whipcords, there was a dull, pounding noise in his ears, and a drumming at his heart. He confessed that he was thoroughly "winded" when he had been following the trail for nearly two hours, so he seated himself upon a withered stump beside it to rest.

He had relinquished the idea that the track would bring him out near Uncle Eb's camp. Had it led thither, he would have rejoined his comrades long before this. His only hope now was that by patiently following it on he might reach the camp of some other traveller, or the lonely log cabin of a pioneer farmer. He had heard of such farm-settlements being scattered here and there on forest clearings.

So presently Dol Farrar got to his feet again, when he had recovered breath and strength, and told himself pluckily that "he wasn't going to knock under," that "he had been in bad scrapes before now, and had not shown the white feather." He gritted his teeth, and resolved that he would not show that craven pinion, even in the desperate solitude of these baffling woods where no eye could see his weakness. He did not want to have a secret, humiliating memory by and by that he had been faltering and distracted when his life depended on his wits and endurance.

He squared his shoulders sturdily, as if to make the most of the budding manhood that was in him, and trudged ahead. And, indeed, he had need to take his courage in both hands, and force it to stand by him; for he had not gone far when, though the forest still continued dense, he became aware that he was beginning a steep ascent. Was the trail going to lead him up a mountain-side? The way grew yet more rugged. Every step was a misery. Jagged edges of rock and never-ending roots seemed to brand themselves with burning friction upon his feet, through their soft buckskin covering. He tried to hearten himself into a belief that he must soon reach some mountain camp or settlement.

But a bleak horror threw a gray shade upon his face as his staring eyes saw that the trail was growing fainter—fainter—fainter. At the foot of a steep crag, where a mass of earth, stones, and dead spruce-trees showed that there had lately been a landslide on the mountain above, he lost it altogether. It had led him to a pile of rubbish.



CHAPTER VII.

A FOREST GUIDE-POST.

At the foot of that crag Dol stood still, while a great shiver crept from his neck up the back of his head, stirring his hair. He peered in every direction; but there was no sign of a camp, nothing to show that any human foot before his had disturbed the solitude of this mountain-side, and no further marks on the ground, save one impression on a bed of earth at his feet where some animal had lately lain.

The disappointment was stupefying.

At last a fog of terror settled down upon him,—a fog which blotted out every sight and sound, blotted out even his own thoughts, all except one, which, like a danger-signal in a mist, kept booming through his brain: "Lost! Lost!"

By and by he was sitting on the piled-up stones and dirt of the slide; but he had no remembrance of getting to this resting-place, for he was still befogged.

Something snorted close to his right ear,—loud snort, which banished stupor, and set his pulses jumping. It was a deer, a beautiful doe in a coat of reddish-drab, matching the autumnal tints of the forest, wherever maples, birches, and cedars mingled with the evergreens. She had bounded upon him suddenly from behind a dead spruce and a mound of earth.

It was long since the game on this part of the mountain had been disturbed. Madam Doe had in all probability never seen a man before, therefore her behavior was not peculiar. A shock of surprise thrilled through her graceful body as she vented that snort, when she caught sight of the new-fangled gray animal who had intruded upon her world, and who sat spell-bound, gazing at her with hopeless eyes, in which gradually a light broke.

But she did not fear him,—this creature in gray. She stood stock-still, and stared at him, so near that he could see her wink her starry eyes, with the white rings round them. She stamped one hoof, kicked an insect from her ear with another, snorted again, wheeled around, and at last broke away for the thick shelter of the trees, lightly and swiftly as a breeze which skims from one thicket to another.

Seeing his mother go for the woods, her spotted fawn, which had been frolicking among the branches of the fallen spruce-tree, skipped from it, passed Dol with a bound which carried him a few feet, and disappeared like a whiff too.

Here was a rouser, indeed, which no boy, unless he was in a far-gone state of suffering, could withstand. Dol Farrar forgot his terrible predicament. The fog had cleared away from his senses, leaving him free to think and act once more.

"Well, I never!" he ejaculated, springing to his feet in amazement. "Wasn't she a beauty? And wasn't she a snorter? I didn't think a deer could make such a row as that. And to stand still and stare at me! I wonder whether she took me for some new-fashioned sort of animal or a gray old stump."

It was a few minutes before he again thought of his plight, and then he was not overcome. He stood perfectly still, trying to review the position coolly, and to get a tight grip of his feelings, so that terror might not again master him.

"I'm in a worse scrape than I ever dreamt of," he muttered, puckering his forehead to do some tall thinking. "And I must do something to get out of it. But what? That's the question.

"I wonder if I loaded this 'ole fuzzee,'"—the lad was making a valiant effort to cheer himself by being jocular,—"and blazed away with it for a while like mad, whether there is any human being around who would hear me. Some fellow might be hunting or trapping in this part of the forest, or farther up the mountain. But what a blockhead I am! Why on earth didn't I do that before I started on this wretched trail?"

But alas! as this was Dol Farrar's first adventure in American woods, it had not occurred to him to do the right thing at the right time. Had he fired a round of signal shots when first he lost the line of spotted trees, he would probably have been heard at his camp, and would have been spared the worst scare he ever had in his life. The negligence was scarcely his fault, however; for Cyrus Garst, who had never before undertaken the responsibility of entertaining a pair of inexperienced boys in woodland quarters, had not, at this early stage of the trip, arranged with his comrades to fire a certain number of shots to signify "Help wanted!" if one of them should stray, or otherwise get into trouble. The idea now cropped up in Dol's perplexed mind, through a confused recollection of tales about forest misadventures which Uncle Eb had told him by the cheery camp-fire.

So he loaded the old shot-gun. It belched forth fire and smoke into space. And the thunder of his shot went rolling off in a reverberating din among the mountain echoes, until a hundred tongues repeated his appeal for help. Again he loaded rapidly and fired. And yet again, with nervous, eager fingers. So on, till he had let off half a dozen shots in quick succession.

Then he waited, listening as if every pulse in his body had suddenly become an ear.

But when the last growling echo had died away, not a sound broke the almost absolute silence on the mountain-side. Evidently not a human soul was near enough to hear or understand his signals of distress.

In these bitter minutes some sensations ran through Dol Farrar which he had never known before; and, as he afterwards expressed it, "they were enough to cover any fellow with goose-flesh."

He felt that he had reached the dreariest point of the unknown, and was a lonely, drifting atom in this immense solitude of forest and rock.

Never in his life before or afterwards did he come so near to Point Despair as when he stumbled down the mountain, spurning that treacherous trail, and going wherever his jaded feet found travelling tolerably easy. He had picked up the shot-gun; but the black ducks, the primary cause of his misadventure, he clean forgot, leaving them lying amid the chaos at the foot of the crag, to have their bones picked by some lucky raccoon or fox.

Wandering along in a zigzag way, he by and by reached the base of the mountain at a point where there was a break in the forest. A patch of dreary-looking swamp was before him, covered with clumps of alder-bushes—a true Slough of Despond.

Dol Farrar knew none of the miseries of plunging through an alder-swamp, but he luckily recalled in time a warning from Cyrus that a slight wetting would render his moccasins useless. While he halted undecidedly on its brink, he pulled out his watch; one glance at this, and another at the sky, which now lay open like a scroll above him, gave him a sickening shock. He had started from camp at noon; now it was after five o'clock. Little more than another hour, and not twilight, but the blackness of a total eclipse, would reign in the forest.

The blood rushed to his head, and his mouth grew feverish at the thought. As he licked his cracking lips, he caught a faint, tinkling, rumbling sound of falling water somewhere to the right. Of a sudden his sufferings of mind and body were merged into one burning desire to drink, and he turned eagerly in that direction.

At the edge of the woods he found a little fairy, foamy waterfall, which had tumbled down from the mountain to be lost in the dismal swamp. But Dol felt that it had accomplished its mission when he unfastened the tin drinking-mug which hung from his belt, and drank—drank—drank! He straightened himself again, feeling that some of the bubbling life of the mountain torrent had passed into him. His eyes lit on a towering pine-tree just beyond it. And then—

Well! if that sky-piercing pine had suddenly changed at a jump into a gray post, bearing the inscription, "One mile to Boston," Dol Farrar could not have been more astonished and relieved than when he saw for the first time a rude forest guide-post.

To the dark, knotted trunk was fastened a piece of light, delicate bark, stripped from a white-birch tree. On this was scrawled in big letters, by some instrument evidently not intended for penmanship:—

"FOLLOW THE BLAZED TRAIL AND YOU ARE SAFE."

"Another blazed trail! Hurrah!" shouted Dol. "Won't I follow it? I never will follow any other again if I live to be a hundred, and come to these woods every year till I die!"

The height of his relief could only be measured by the depth of his past misery, which would truly have been enough to set a weaker boy crazy. With watering eyes and panting breaths that came near to being sobs of gladness, he started upon the new trail. It led him off into the forest surrounding the swamp.

The pine that had been chosen for guide-post was the first in the line of spotted trees. The others followed it closely, with intervals of eight or ten yards between them; and as the notches in their trunks were freshly cut, Dol followed the track without any difficulty for twenty minutes. He had a suspicion that he was nearing the end of it; though he was still in forest gloom, with light coming in meagre, ever-lessening streaks through the pine-tufts above. Then he started more violently than when the deer snorted near his ear.

Suddenly and shrilly the blast of a horn rang through the darkening woodland aisles, followed, after a pause of a minute or two, by a second and louder blast.

Then a well-pitched, far-reaching voice sang out:—"Come to supper, boys! Come to supper!"

"Good gracious!" said Dol, conscious on the instant that he was as hollow as a drum. "There are enough surprises in these forests to raise the hair on a fellow's head half a dozen times a day!"

A matter of forty yards more, and a burst of light swam before his eyes. He had reached the end of the blazed trail.



CHAPTER VIII.

ANOTHER CAMP.

"Hello! Come to supper, boys! Come to supper right away!"

Half eagerly, half shrinkingly, Dol emerged from the woods, feeling a very torment of hunger quickened in him by the tantalizing sound of that oft-repeated invitation.

A sight met him which, because of what went before and all that came after, will be forever chief among the forest pictures which rise in exciting panorama before his memory, when camping is a thing of the past.

A broad dash of evening light, the sun's afterglow, fell upon a patch of clearing bordered by clumps of slim, outstanding pines, the scouts of their massive brethren. That this was used as a camping-ground the first glance revealed. A camp which looked to the tired eyes of the lost boy a real "home-camp," though it consisted of rude log cabins, occupied it. A couple of birch-bark canoes reposed amid a network of projecting roots. Withered stumps and tree-tops littered the ground.

In the foreground of the picture stood a man with a horn in his uplifted hand, which he had just taken from his mouth. He was minus a coat; and the rough-and-tumble disarray of his attire showed that he had been lounging by his camp-fire, or perhaps overseeing the preparation of supper. Dol had a vague impression that the individual was not a forest-guide like Uncle Eb, nor a rough lumberman such as he had heard of. He would have taken him for a pioneer farmer,—not having yet encountered such a character,—but there could be no farm on this little bit of clearing. And he was too dazed to see that there were signs of a cultivated intelligence in the tanned, beaming face under the horn-blower's broad-brimmed hat. Indeed, the hat itself, its wearer, log huts, canoes, and trees seemed to have a strange propensity to waltz before the lad's eyes, and there was a queer waving sensation in his own legs, as if they, too, would join in the spinning movement. For as he advanced into the light out of the sombre shadows, a dizziness from long tramping in the woods, and from a hunger such as he had never before experienced, overcame him. He reeled against an outstanding tree, troubled by an affliction which Uncle Eb had called "wheels in his head."

"Ho! you boys. Where in thunder are you? Come to supper, or the venison will be spoiled!" shouted the possessor of the horn again, shutting one eye into which a crimson ray was pouring, while he swept the skirts of the woods with the other; and there was music as well as bluster in his shout.

Lo! the first to answer this fetching invitation was the foot-sore, leg-weary boy, pale from exhaustion, with his strange equipment of powder-horn, coon-skin pouch, and ancient shot-gun, who, getting partly the better of his giddiness, crossed the clearing slowly, as if he was groping his way. Within a few feet of the horn-blower he halted; for the man had lowered his horn, and was gazing at him with keen, questioning eyes. Dol tried to find suitable speech to express his need; but though words came with considerable effort, his voice sounded hoarse and creaky in his own ears, and threatened to crack off altogether.

He was doing his best to brace up and speak plainly, when his sentence was stopped by a noise of pounding footsteps. The next moment he saw himself surrounded by three well-grown, daring-looking lads, one about his own age, one older, one younger, who were gazing at him with critical curiosity. All the pluck in Dol Farrar rose to meet this emergency. He felt as if his legs were threatening to smash under him like pipe-stems. There was a whirling and buzzing in his head. It seemed as if his words had such a long way to travel from his brain to his tongue that they got confused and changed before he uttered them.

But through it all he was conscious of one clear thought: that he was an Old-World boy on parade before these strapping New-World lads. He set his teeth, drove his gun hard against the ground, and, as it were, anchored himself to it, while strange, doubting lights came into his eyes as he tried to get a grip of his senses.



He succeeded. At last he addressed the gentleman with the horn, knowing that he was speaking to the point,—

"Good-evening, sir," he said. "I—I—we're camping out somewhere in the woods. I—I got lost to-day. I've walked an awful distance. Perhaps you could tell me"—

But the man stepped suddenly forward, with a blaze of welcome in his eyes; for he saw the brave effort which the lad was making, and that his strength was giving out. He put a kindly arm through Dol's, as if to warmly greet a fellow-camper, but really to support him.

"I'll not tell you about anything until you've had a good, square meal," he said. "That's our way in woodland quarters,—to eat first, and talk afterwards. If you're lost, you've struck a friend's camp, and at the right time too, son; so cheer up! After supper you can tell us your yarn, and I guess we can set you right."

Here at last was a surprise of unmixed blessedness for poor Dol; namely, the brotherly hospitality which is always extended to a stranger in a Maine camp, whether that be the temporary home of a millionnaire or the shanty of a poor logger.

His new friend led him into the largest of the cabins, which contained a fireplace built of huge stones, where red flames frisked around fragrant birch logs, a camp-bed of evergreen boughs about ten feet wide, a rude table, a bench, and a few stools of pine-wood.

Over the camp-fire was stooping a bright-eyed, muscular fellow, whose dress somewhat resembled Uncle Eb's, but who had no negro blood in his veins. He was frying meat; and such tempting whiffs mingled with the steam which floated up from his pan, that Dol's nostrils twitched, and his hungry longing grew almost unbearable as he inhaled them.

"I guess this chunk of ven'zon is about cooked, Doc," said this personage, as Dol's kindly host entered the hut, with him in tow, followed closely by the boys of his own camp.

"All right, then! Let's have it!" was the reply. "I'm pretty glad our camp-fare is decent to-night, Joe, for we've a visitor here; a hungry bird who has strayed from his own camp, and has wandered through the forest until he looks like a death's head. But we'll soon fix him up; won't we, Joe? Give him a mug of hot tea right away. Hot tea is worth a dozen of any other drink in the woods for a pick-me-up."

A spark of fun kindled in Dol's eyes when he heard himself described as "a hungry bird." It brightened into an appreciative beam as the reviving tea trickled down his throat.

"Eatin's wot he wants, I guess," said Joe, the camp guide and cook, placing some meat and a slab of bread of his own baking on a tin plate for the guest.

Dol began on them greedily; and though the first mouthful or two threatened to sicken him, his squeamishness wore off, and he gained strength with every morsel.

"How do you like Maine venison, my boy? Like it well enough to have another piece, eh?" asked his host, when he saw that the haggard, gray look was leaving the wanderer's face, and that the appalled, dazed expression, the result of being lost in the woods, had disappeared from his eyes.

"I think it's the best meat I ever tasted," answered Dol heartily. "It's so tender, and has a splendid taste."

"Ha! ha! It ought to be prime," chuckled the owner of the camp. "It was cut from the quarters of a buck which my nephew here, Royal Sinclair," pointing out the tallest of three lads, "shot four days ago. He was a regular crackerjack—that buck! I mean, he was as fine a deer as ever I saw; weighed over two hundred pounds, had seven prongs to his horns on one side and six on the other. Royal is going to take the antlers home with him to Philadelphia. We were mighty glad to get him, too; for we have been camping here for five weeks, and were running short of provisions. Roy had quite an attack of buck-fever over it, though he didn't think he was killing the 'fatted calf', to entertain a visitor; did you, Roy?"

"I guess not, Uncle! But I'm pretty glad, all the same," answered Royal, with a smiling glance at Dol.

Young Farrar found himself in very pleasant quarters; and, now that he was recovering, his laugh rang from one log wall to the other.

"What's 'buck-fever'?" he questioned, while Joe filled his plate with more venison.

"A sort of disease of which you'll learn the meaning before you leave these woods," answered his host merrily. "It attacks a man when he's out after a deer, and makes him feel as if one leg stands firm under him, while the other shakes as if it had the palsy.

"Now I guess you'd like to know whose camp you're in, my boy, and then you can tell your story. Well, to begin with the most useful member of the party. That knowing-looking fellow over there, who cooked your supper, is Joe Flint, the best guide that ever pulled a trigger or handled a frying-pan in this region—barring one. These three rascals," here the speaker beamed upon the strapping lads, with whom Dol had been exchanging sympathetic glances of curiosity, "are my nephews, Royal, Will, and Martin Sinclair. And I—I—

"Good gracious! Listen to that, Joe! What's up now? Another fellow lost in the woods? Somebody is firing a round with his rifle! Perhaps he wants help. Those are signal shots, anyhow!"

The camper whose horn had been Dol's signal of deliverance, broke off abruptly in his introductions, just as he had arrived at the most interesting point, and was proclaiming his own identity. He rattled off his short exclamations in excitement, and dashed out of the cabin, followed by Joe, his nephews, and Dol, the latter limping painfully, for his feet now felt like hot-water bags.

"That Winchester has spoken eight or ten times," said the leader, counting the shots fired by somebody away in the dark recesses of the forest from a powerful repeating-rifle. "Let's give the fellow, whoever he is, an answer, Joe!"

He seized his own rifle hastily, loaded the magazine with blank cartridges, and fired a noisy salute.

In the pause which followed, while all strained their ears to listen, the sound of a shrill, distant "Coo-hoo!" the woodsman's hail, reached them from the forest.

Joe instantly responded with a vehement "Coo-hoo! Coo-hoo-oo!" the first call being short and brisk, the second prolonged into a roar which showed the strength of the guide's lungs,—a roar that might carry for miles.

Shortly afterwards there was a crashing and tearing amid some undergrowth near the edge of the forest. A man bounded forth from the pitch-black shadows into the clearing, where a little daylight still lingered. As he approached the group, Dol, who was in the background, gave a startled, yearning cry; but it was drowned in a loud burst from his host.

"Why, Cyrus Garst!" exclaimed the latter, peering into the new-comer's face. "How goes it, man? I never expected to see you here. Surely you haven't come to grief in the woods? You look scared to death!"

Cyrus—for it was he—grasped the welcoming hand which the owner of this camp extended to him. But his dark eyes did not linger a moment meeting the other's. They turned hither and thither, flashing in all directions restlessly, like search-lights.

"I'm glad to see you, Doc," he said. "I didn't know you were anywhere near. But I'm half distracted just now. A youngster belonging to our camp is missing. I've been scouring the forest for hours, and firing signals, hoping he might hear them. But"—

Here Cyrus caught sight of Dol, who with a cry which in its changing inflections was longing, penitent, joyful, was making towards him. The Harvard student strode forward, and gripped the boy by his elbows. In the dusk their eyes were near together; Garst's were stern, Dol's blinking and unsteady.

"Adolphus Farrar," began Cyrus in a voice as if he was making an arrest, "have you been here in this camp, or where have you been, while your brother and I were searching the woods like maniacs? What unheard-of folly possessed you to go off by yourself?"

Dol made a gurgling attempt to answer, but his voice rattled and died away in his throat. His eyes grew decidedly leaky.

"Say, Cyrus!" interrupted the man who had befriended him and now proved his champion, "let the youngster get breath and tell his story from start to finish before you blow him up. I guess he wasn't much to blame; and if he was, he has suffered for it. He found his way here not quite half an hour ago, so played out from wandering through the forest that he was ready to drop in his tracks. And I tell you he showed his grit too; for he managed to brace up and keep on his feet, though he was as exhausted a kid as ever I saw."

The "kid," forgiving this objectionable term because of the soothing allusion to a trying time when he had behaved like a man, winked and gulped to get rid of his emotion, and twisted his elbows out of Cyrus's hold. The latter lost his angry look, and released them.

"I must fire three shots to let Neal and Uncle Eb know I've found you," he said. "We parted company a while ago, and they're beating about the woods in another direction. Whoever first came upon any trace of you was to fire his rifle three times."

The signal was instantly given.

More far-reaching "Coo-hoos!" were exchanged. Ere long Neal was beside his brother, looking at him with eyes which showed the same tendency to leak that Dol's had done a while ago, and battling with a desire to squeeze the wanderer in a breathless hug. He relieved his feelings instead by "blowing up" Dol with withering fire and a rough choke in his voice.

But when, in response to an invitation from the genial camper whom Cyrus and Joe called "Doc," the whole party, guides included, had gathered around the camp-fire in the big log hut, and Dol told his story from start to finish, he became the hero of the evening.

His only fault had been a rash venturing into the unknown; and well it was that he had not followed the unknown to his death.

"Why, boy!" exclaimed Cyrus, with a strong shudder, when Dol had described the false trail which led him to the foot of the crag, "that wasn't a human trail at all. It was a deer-road. The deer spend their day up in the mountains, and come down to the ponds at evening to feed and drink. Now, a buck or doe in its regular journeys to and fro will follow one line, to which it becomes accustomed. Perhaps fifty others, seeing the ground trodden, will run in the same track. And there you have your well-used path, which looks as if it was made by men's feet!

"You may thank your lucky star, Dol, every hour of this night, that the false trail didn't lead you away—away—higher—higher—up the mountain, until you dropped in your tracks, and died there alone, as others have done before."

A shocked hush fell upon the group around the camp-fire. Even the guides were silent. But the fragrant birchen logs sputtered and glowed, darting out playful tongues of flame. They seemed to call upon everybody to dismiss gloomy thoughts of what might have been; to crack jokes, sing songs, tell yarns, and be as merry as befitted men who had a log hut for a shelter, fresh whiffs of forest air stealing to them through an open doorway, and such a camp-fire.

Joe began to prepare supper for the three who had searched so long and distractedly for Dol that they confessed to not having eaten for hours. While more venison was being cooked, the juveniles, American and English, who had been secretly taking stock of each other, cast aside restraint, and became as "chummy" as if they had been acquainted for years instead of hours.

Such a carnival of fun and noise was started through their combined efforts in the old log camp, that its owner declared he "couldn't hear himself think." Seizing his horn, he blew a blast which called for order.

"Say, my boy, let me have a look at your feet," he said, cornering Dol. "A deer-road isn't a king's highway, as I dare say you've found out to your cost. Pull off your moccasins and socks, and let me doctor your poor trotters."

Young Farrar very gladly did as he was bidden.

"Humph!" said his friend. "I thought so. They're a mass of bruises and blisters. You've been pretty well branded, son. Moccasins aren't much use to protect the feet from roots and sharp stones, if you happen to strike a bad place in forest travelling, unless you have taken the precaution to put double soles in them; didn't you know that? Now, Cyrus Garst," turning to the student, "you're all going to camp with us to-night. This lad can't tramp any more. As a doctor I forbid it."

"Are you a doctor, sir?" questioned Dol, with a thrill of surprise, which he managed to conceal.

"Something of the kind, boy," answered his host, smiling. "I don't look much like a city physician, do I? I graduated from a medical college in Philadelphia, and took my degree. But I had an enthusiasm for the woods. One hour of forest life in dear old Maine was to me worth a year spent amid streets, alleys, and sky-scraping buildings; so I fixed my headquarters at Greenville, and have spent most of my time in the wilderness."

"Where every trapper, guide, and lumberman knows Dr. Phil Buck, whom they disrespectfully and affectionately call 'Doc,'" put in Cyrus. "And many a poor fellow owes his life or limbs to Doc's knowledge and nursing in some hard time of sickness, or after one of the dreadful accidents common in the forests."

Dol could well understand this; for he now was benefiting by Dr. Phil's lively desire to relieve suffering, and was silently breathing blessings on his head. The doctor had bathed his puffy feet in warm water taken from Joe's camp-kettle, and was anointing them with a healing salve, after which he tucked them into a loose pair of slippers of his own. Meanwhile, he chatted pleasantly.

"This isn't the first time that your friend Cyrus and I have run against each other in the wilds," he said, "nor the first time that we've camped together, either. Bless you! we could make you jump with some of our stories. Do you remember that night in '89, Cy, when you, with your guide, came upon me lying under a rough shelter of bark and spruce boughs, which I had rigged up for myself near Roaring Brook, on the side of Mount Katahdin?"

"I guess I do remember it," answered Cyrus, laughing.

"A mighty hungry man I was, too, that evening," went on Doc; "for I had no food left but one little package of soup-powder and a few beans. I had been trying all day to get a successful shot at a moose or deer, and muffed it every time. It wasn't the lucky side of the moon for me. Well, you behaved like the Good Samaritan to me, then, Cy; shared your meat and all your stuff, and we slept like twin brothers under my shelter."

"Yes; and a bear visited our temporary camp in the night!" exclaimed Cyrus, bursting into uproarious mirth over some over-poweringly funny recollection; "he made off with my knapsack, which I had left lying by the camp-fire. I suppose old Bruin thought he'd find something good in it to eat; but he didn't. So he tore my one extra shirt and every article in the pack to shreds, and chewed up the handle of my razor, so that I couldn't shave again until I got back to civilization, when I was as bristly as a porcupine."

"Perhaps Bruin tried to shave himself," suggested Dol.

"At all events, he had wisdom enough not to cut his throat," answered the story-teller. "We three—Doc, my guide, and myself—were stupidly tired, and slept so soundly that we did not discover the theft nor who the marauder was until the following morning. Then we found my knapsack gone, and the tracks of a huge bear in some soft earth near our shelter. We traced his footprints through a bog until we found the spot, not far off, where, overcome by greed or curiosity, he ripped up that strong leather knapsack as if it was papier mache and made hay of its contents."

The boys had all crowded near to listen. It was now the social hour for campers. By the camp-fire more reminiscences followed; and the two guides chimed in it with moose stories, bear stories, panther stories, wild tales of every imaginable and unimaginable kind of adventure, until the lads thought no mythology which they had ever learned could rival in marvels the forest lore.

At this opportune time, Neal suddenly thought of describing, or attempting to describe, that strangest of strange calls which he had heard, after the capsizing of the canoe, on the preceding night, when Cyrus and he were jacking for deer on Squaw Pond.

Joe grunted expressively. "So help me! it was the moose call!" he ejaculated. "What say, Doc?"

"I guess it was," answered Dr. Phil. "It was either the cow-moose herself calling, or some hunter imitating her with his birch-bark trumpet. It's a weird sort of experience, to hear that call for the first time; I shouldn't wonder if your heart went whack-whack, lad?"

"I only hope he'll get a chance to hear it again before he goes back to England," said Cyrus.

Forthwith, the Harvard man proceeded to explain that he was bent on pressing forward for a distance of sixty miles or so, to the heart of the wilderness, to search for moose, but that he intended to do the journey in a leisurely, zigzag fashion, camping for a couple of nights at various points, in order to do the honors of the forest to his English comrades.

"So you're English, are you! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho!" exclaimed the doctor, looking at the young Farrars. "Well, I suppose we'll have to put our best foot foremost to give you a good time in American woods."

"I think that's what we're having, sir—such a jolly good time that we'll never forget it," answered Neal courteously.

"Yes, it's jolly enough now; but I tell you I didn't find it so to-day," grumbled Dol, while his eyes gleamed like polished steel with the light of present fun. "But as long as I live I'll remember the sound of your horn, Doctor, when I was dead-beat."

"Is that so? Well, I guess I'll have to make you a present of that horn, boy, when we part company, and you go back to civilization, and of the piece of birch-bark, too, which led you to our camp. 'Twas Joe who fixed that to the pine near the swamp; for my lads had a habit of following the trail to the alders, looking for moose or deer signs. He scrawled his sentence on it with the end of a cartridge. I guess it would be a sort of curiosity in England."

Dol whooped his delight.

"I'll put it under a glass shade! I'll"—

While he was casting about in his mind for some way of immortalizing that bit of white bark, Doc's genial bluster was heard again,—

"Come! come! you fellows! No more skylarking in this camp to-night! It's high time for all campers to be snoring. Turn in! Turn in!"

But nobody was in a hurry to obey the summons to bed. While hands and feet were being stretched out to the sizzling birch logs for a final toast, Royal Sinclair, who had a trick of speaking very quickly, with a slight click in his utterance, as if his tongue struck his teeth, began to pour some communications into Neal's ear in rapid dashes of talk,—

"This is just about the jolliest night we ever had in the forest, and we've had a staving time all through. We live in Philadelphia, and Uncle Phil—we call him 'Doc' like everybody else—brought us out here for our summer vacation. This old log camp was built several years ago by a hunting-party, of whom he was one. The walls were getting mouldy; but he cleaned up the largest of the huts, with Joe's help, and made it our headquarters. He never needs a guide himself; not a bit of it! He can find his way anywhere through the woods with his compass. But he is a good deal away, so he engaged Joe to go out with us.

"He often starts off at a moment's notice, and travels dozens of miles on foot, or in a birch canoe, if he hears of a bad accident far away in the forest. Sometimes a lumberman or trapper cuts his foot in two, or nearly chops off his leg with his axe; and these poor fellows would probably die while their comrades were lugging them through the woods on a litter, trying to reach a settlement, if it weren't for our Doc.

"Once in a while, when he comes to visit us in Philadelphia, a few people call him a crank, because he lives out here and dresses like a settler; but I call him a regular brick."

"So do I," said Neal with spirit.

"You're awfully lucky to be able to camp out during October," rattled on Roy. "That's the month for moose-hunting, jacking, and all the most exciting sort of fun. We have to go home in a day or two, for our school has reopened, unless"—

"When Royal Sinclair gets a streak of talking, you might as well try to bottle up the Mississippi as to stop him," said Dr. Phil, laughing. "I can't hear what he's saying, but I know that his tongue is clicking like a telegraph instrument. But I hope it has given its last message for to-night. You really must turn in, boys. I let you have an extra social hour, because to-morrow will be Sunday, a day of rest after the travels and excitements of the week. Think of it, lads! A Sunday in the woods—God's first cathedral! May it do us all good!"

The guide, Joe, built up the fire. Fresh birch logs blistered and sputtered as creeping curls of bluish flame enwrapped them. Kindling rapidly, they threw out fantastic lights, which danced like a regiment of red elves around the old log walls of the cabin.

"If a fellow could only drop off to sleep every night in the year seeing and smelling such a fire as that!" breathed Neal, as, accepting a share of Royal's blankets, he stretched his tired limbs on the evergreen mattress.

"Then life would be too jolly for anything," answered Roy.



CHAPTER IX.

A SUNDAY AMONG THE PINES.

"Men and boys learn a good many wholesome lessons in the forest, one of which is that it pays better to take a day of rest in seven if they want to make the most of themselves and their opportunities. Therefore, lads, we'll do no tramping to-day. And we'll have a bit of a service by and by over there under the pines."

So spoke Doctor Phil on the following morning, when the two sets of campers, now one joyous, brotherly crowd, were sitting or lounging about the pine-wood table, leisurely emptying tin mugs of tea or coffee, and eating porridge and rolls of Joe's baking.

"You haven't told us yet, Cyrus," he went on, "what point you're bound for. I know you're level-headed, and plan every forest trip beforehand, to economize time."

"Yes, a fellow likes to do that; it adds to the pleasures of anticipation," Garst answered. "But it's precious little use, after all, when you're visiting a region which is as full of surprises as an egg is full of meat. However, I have arranged to meet Herb Heal, the guide whom I generally employ, at a hunting-camp near Millinokett Lake."

"A good moose country," put in Doc.

"I know it. At all events, it is a good place for a home-camp; one can make excursions into the dense forests at the foot of Katahdin, which are unrivalled for big game—so Herb says, and he's an authority. These English fellows may expect to have an attack of buck-fever, or moose-fever rather, which will set their blood on fire. Not that we're out chiefly for killing; we're willing to let his mooseship keep a whole skin, and go in peace to replenish the forests, unless he grows cantankerous and charges us."

"If he happens to be an old bull, and gits his mad up, he may do that; it's as likely as not," chimed in Joe Flint, who was listening.

"Well, it there's a man in Maine who can be warranted to start a moose, and to follow up his trail until he gets a sight of him, living or dead, that man is Herb Heal," said the doctor. "And his adventures go ahead of those of any woodsman up to date. You must get him to tell you how he swam across a pond at the tail of a bull-moose, holding with his fingers and teeth to the creature's long hair, then got astraddle of its back, and severed its jugular vein with his hunting-knife. How's that! It was the liveliest swim I ever heard of. But I mustn't spoil his yarns. He must tell them himself.

"A fine son of the woods is Herb Heal!" went on the speaker, with enthusiasm. "I ran across him first five years ago, when he was trapping for fur-bearing animals in the dense forests you mentioned near the foot of Mount Katahdin. He had a partner with him then, a half-breed Indian, whom woodsmen called 'Cross-eyed Chris,' a willing, plucky, honest fellow when he was sober. But he loved fire-water. Let him once taste spirits, or smell them, and he went clean crazy. He did a dog's trick to Herb,—stole all his furs and savings, with a splendid pair of moose antlers, while he was away from camp one day, and skipped out of the State. Herb swore he'd shoot him. But I don't think he has ever come across him since. And if he should, he wouldn't stick to his threat. He's not built that way."

There was a general hum of interest over this story, which even Cyrus had not heard before.

"Now, how are you going to reach your camp on Millinokett Lake?" asked Dr. Phil, when the buzz had subsided. "That's the next question."

"We intend to tramp the entire distance by easy stages, and get there about the middle of October," answered young Garst for himself and his comrades. "Uncle Eb will go along with us as guide; and he'll supply a tent, so that we can rest for two or three nights at a time if we choose."

"Hum!" said the doctor doubtfully, laying his hand on Dol's shoulder. "This youngster oughtn't to do much tramping for a few days, Cyrus. That deer-road did up his feet pretty badly. I'll be travelling in your direction myself the day after to-morrow. I want to visit a farm-settlement within a dozen miles of the lake, where the farmer has a sickly child, the only treasure in his log shanty. The mite frets if Doc doesn't come to see her once in a while.

"Therefore, I propose that we join forces, and press forward together. I guess I'll keep my nephews out here for a week longer, and take the responsibility of their missing that time at school. Now that they have fallen in with your friends, it would be a shame to separate Young England and Young America without giving them a chance to get friendly."

Here Dr. Phil beamed upon the five boys, who, after one night in the forest, sleeping in a light-hearted row on the evergreen boughs, with their feet to the fire, had reached a brotherly intimacy which years of city life might not have bred.

"I further propose," he went on, "that we hire a roomy wagon and a pair of strong horses from a settler who has a clearing about two miles from here. There is an old logging-road which runs through the woods towards the point for which we're heading. We could follow that for the first half of our journey. It isn't a turnpike, you know. In fact, it's only a broad track where the underbrush has been cleared away, and the trees cut down, with strips of corduroy road sandwiched in. But the lumbermen still haul supplies over it to their camps, and I propose that we follow their example. We can pile our tent, camp duffle [stores], and all our packs into the wagon, together with the hero of the deer-road,"—winking at Dol,—"and the rest of us can take turns in riding. It will be a big lark for these youngsters to travel over a corduroy road. A very bracing ride they'll have in more senses than one; but they can spin plenty of yarns about it when they get home."

The "youngsters," one and all, signified their approval of the suggestion. Cyrus, who, as a college man, was above this category, was pleased to acquiesce too.

"When can we get the wagon, Doctor?" asked Neal, burning to press onward.

"Oh! the day after to-morrow, I guess. And now, lads!" Dr. Phil's voice was serious, but exultant, "we're a thoroughly happy set of fellows, in accord with each other and our surroundings. We feel our brains clear, our gladness springing up, and our lungs swelling to double their size with the whiffs which reach us from those sky-piercing pines yonder. So we will remember that 'the wide earth is our Father's temple.' Over there in the woods we will worship him, while millions of forest creatures about us, flying, bounding, or building, in obedience to his laws, simply worship too."

A music soft, deep, sighing, like the murmur of an organ under the fingers of a master musician, rolled through the pine-tops as the band of campers, guides included, followed Doc into the forest. They passed the clumps of slender trees near the camp, and reached a dimly-lit green aisle.

Towering pines, so tall and erect that they seemed shooting upward to kiss the clouds, were the pillars of their cathedral. Its roof of tasselled boughs was stabbed by flashing needles of sunlight, which let in a flickering, mellow radiance, and traced a pattern on the woodland carpet. Every whiff of forest air was natural incense.

Dr. Phil stood as if in the audience-chamber of the King, and removed his wide-brimmed hat.

"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory, for ever and ever. Amen!" he said.

Then Cyrus's voice led the worship.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"

he sang, in a strong, glad outburst.

Boys and guides, in a great chorus, swelled the familiar words. Each sweetly chirping woodland bird, after its own manner, echoed them. The music among the pine-tops mingled with them. The forest fairly rang with a magnificent, adoring Doxology.

"We ought to be decent kind of fellows after this," said Cyrus, when the little service was over.

And the doctor answered,—

"I tell you, boy, the church was never built where a man feels so ready to worship the God-Father in spirit and in truth as he does in the wild woods."

And looking on the six fresh, manly faces before him, Dr. Phil saw that this happy woodland trip would have grander results than adding to the campers' inches and to the breadth of their shoulders. For each one of them had realized this morning that behind all strength and beauties of forest growth, behind their own souls' gladness, was a Presence which they could "almost palpably feel."



CHAPTER X.

FORWARD ALL!

Speculations about the journey, and in especial about the corduroy road, were rife in the boys' minds during the forty and odd hours which elapsed between the Sunday service and the time of their start.

The travellers met at the settler's cabin early on Tuesday morning, having broken camp shortly after daybreak. On Monday evening Cyrus and Neal, with Uncle Eb, had returned to the bark hut to pack their knapsacks, and make ready for a forward march. On the way thither, it being just the hour for the deer to be running,—that is, descending from the hills for an evening meal,—Neal got a successful shot at a small two-year-old buck. This was a stroke of luck for the campers, and a necessary deed of death. It supplied them with venison for their journey; and, as Cyrus said, "they had already put a shamefully big hole in Dr. Phil's stores, and must procure a respectable supply of meat to make up for it."

It also provided Tiger with plenty of bones to crunch during his master's absence; for the dog was left behind in charge of the hut, as indeed he often was for a week or more while Uncle Eb was away guiding. The sportsmen who engaged the latter's services were generally averse to the creature's presence with the party, lest he should scare their game.

Cyrus and Neal bade him a pathetic farewell, remembering the exciting fun he had given them with the raccoon. Dol sent him lots of approving messages, which were duly delivered, with rough pats and shakes, by Uncle Eb, who fully believed that the brute understood every word of them. Indeed, the sign language of Tiger's expressive tail confirmed this opinion.

Dol had remained at the log camp with his new friends, Dr. Phil thinking it well that he should rest his feet until the morning of the start. His brother promised to bring his knapsack and rifle to the settler's cabin. Uncle Eb repossessed himself of his shot-gun, pouch, and powder-horn, which he carried back to his hut, and left under Tiger's protection, telling Dol that "if he wanted to bag any more black ducks he'd have to give 'em a dose wid de rifle, for he warn't a-goin' to lug dat ole fuzzee t'rough de woods."

It was the perfection of an October morning, sunshiny and pleasant, with a mellow freshness in the air which matched the mellow tints of the forest, when the travellers joined forces at the farm-settlement.

Engaged in the thrilling work of felling a pine-tree to extend his father's clearing, they found the settler's son, a brawny fellow about Cyrus's age, in buckskin leggings and coon-skin cap, who wielded his axe with arms which were tough and knotted as pine limbs. He bawled to them in the forceful language of the backwoods, which to unaccustomed ears sounded a trifle barbaric, to keep out of the way until his tree had fallen.

When the pine at last tumbled earthward with a thud which reverberated for miles through the forest, he gave a mighty yell, waved his skin cap, and came towards the visitors.

"Hulloa, Lin!" boomed the doctor, greeting this native as an old acquaintance.

"Hello, Doc!" answered Lin. "By the great horn spoon! I didn't expect to see you here. Who are these fellers?"

The doctor introduced his comrades. Lin greeted them with bluff simplicity, and called them one and all by their Christian names as soon as these could be found out. Doc alone came in for his short title—if such it could be called. Luckily the campers of both nationalities, from Cyrus downward, were without any element of snobbery in their dispositions. It seemed to them only a jolly part of the untrammelled forest life that man should go back to his primitive relations with his brother man; that in the woods, as Doc said, "manhood should be the only passport," and that titles and distinctions should never be thought of by guides or anybody else. They were well-pleased to be taken simply for what they were,—jolly, companionable fellows,—and to be valued according to the amount of grit and good-temper they showed.

And they learned this morning to appreciate the pioneer courage and resolute spirit of the rugged settlers who had cleared a home for themselves amid the surrounding wilderness of forest and stream. Their roughness of speech was as nothing in comparison with their brave endurance of hardships, their deeds of heroism, and their free-handed hospitality.

Lin led his visitors straight to a log cabin, before which his father, a veteran woodsman, who bore the scars of bears' teeth upon his body, was digging and planting. This old farmer, too, greeted Doc as a friend, and when the wagon was talked about, was quite willing to do anything to serve him.

"But ye must have a square meal afore ye travel," he said. "Jerusha! I couldn't let ye go without eatin'. Mother!" shouting to his wife, who was inside the cabin. "Say, Mother! Ha'n't ye got somethin' fer these fellers to munch?"

Forthwith a big, rosy woman, who had herself fought a bear in her time, and had shot him, too, before he attacked her farmyard, hustled round, and got up such a meal as the travellers had not tasted since they entered the woods. They had a splendid "tuck-in," consisting of fried ham, boiled eggs, potatoes, hot bread, yellow butter, and coffee. And the meal was accompanied with thrilling stories from the lips of the old settler about the hardships and desperate scenes of earlier pioneering days. Doc coaxed him to relate these for the boys' benefit. And many eyes dilated as he told of blood-curdling adventures with the "lunk soos," or "Indian devil," the dreadful catamount or panther, which was once the terror of Maine woodsmen.

"So help me! I'd a heap sooner meet a ragin' lion than a panther," said the old man. "My own father came near to bein' eaten alive by one when I was a kid. He was workin' with a gang o' lumbermen in these forests at timber-makin', and was returnin' to their camp, when the beast bounced out of a thicket all of a suddint. Poor dad was skeered stiff. The thing screeched,—a screech so turrible that it was enough to turn a man's sweat to ice-water, an' a'most set him crazy. Dad hadn't no gun with him; so he shinned up the nighest tree like mad, an' hollered fit to bust his windpipe, hopin' t'other fellers at the camp 'ud hear him.

"But the panther made up another tree hard by, an' sprang 'pon him. Fust it grabbed dad by the heel. Then it tore a big piece out o' the calf of his leg, an' devoured it. Think of it, boys! Them's the sort o' dangers that the fust settlers an' lumbermen in these woods had to face.

"Wal, dad reckoned he was a goner, sure. But he managed to cut a limb from the tree with his huntin'-knife, an' tied the knife to the end of it. With that he fought the beast while his comrades, who had heard his mad yells, were gittin' to him. With the fust shot that one of 'em fired the catamount made off.

"Dad was the sickest man ye ever saw fer a spell. His wound healed after a bit, under the care of an Injun doctor; but his hair, which had been soot-black on that evenin' when he was returnin' to camp, was as white as milk afore he got about again; an' he was notional and narvous-like as long as he lived.

"He said the animal was like a tremenjous big cat, about four feet high an' five or six feet in length. It was a sort o' bluish-gray color. An' it had a very long tail curled up at the end, which it moved like a cat's.

"Boys, that catamount is the only animal that an Indian is skeered of. Ask a red man to hunt a moose, a bear, or a wolf, an' he's ready to follow it through forest an' swamp till he downs it or drops. But ask him to chase a panther, an' he'll shake his head an' say, 'He all one big debil!' He calls the beast, in his own lingo, 'lunk soos,' which means 'Injun devil;' an' so we woodsmen call it too."

It was at this moment that Lin put his head in at the cabin-door, and announced that "the wagon an' hosses war a' ready."

"Wal, boys, I swan! it's many a long year since a panther was seen in these forests, so ye needn't feel skeery about meetin' one," said the old settler, as he stood outside his log home, and watched his guests start. "I'll 'low ye won't find travellin' too easy 'long the ole corduroy road. Come again!"

There was much waving of hats as the wagon, a roomy, four-wheeled vehicle, moved off, with a creaking in its joints as if it were squealing a protest against its load, which consisted of the five lads, together with knapsacks, guns, tents, and the camp duffle.

"Forward, all!" shouted Dr. Phil, who had been chosen to act as captain of the two companies during the few days while they journeyed together.

Lin, who was charioteer, cracked a long whip above his horses. The boys cheered, while Doc, Cyrus, and the two guides fell behind, choosing to follow the wagon on foot for the first few miles of the journey.

"Where did you buy that, Lin?" asked Neal, climbing over to a perch beside the driver, and pointing to a heavy Colt's revolver which the young settler was buckling round his waist.

"Didn't buy it. I traded a calf for it at Greenville more'n a year ago," was the reply. "Fust-rate gun it is, too, I vum! I've stood at our cabin-door, and killed many a buck with it. On'y 'tain't much good for tackling a bear. Wish't the bears ud get as scarce as the panthers! Then we'd be rid o' two master pests. Hello! Don't y'u git to tumbling out jist yet! That's on'y a circumstance to the jolts there'll be when we strike a bit o' corduroy road."

Lin Hathaway grabbed young Farrar by the elbow while he spoke, and held him steady with the horny hand which had swung the axe against the doomed pine-tree. For Neal had shown a sudden inclination to pitch headlong out of the wagon, as its right wheels were hoisted a foot or more above the left ones by rolling over a mossy bump in the ground.

For the first five miles the forest road had been simply constructed thus: First, the bushy undergrowth had been cut away and thrown to one side, the space cleared being about eight feet wide; then all trees growing in the range of this track had been sawn off close to the ground, and windfalls which barred the way were removed. It was a rude highway, with plenty of deformities, such as ends of rotting stumps, twisted roots, ridges and bumps which had never been levelled; yet it was beautiful beyond any smooth, well-graded road which the travellers had ever seen. As it wound along in graceful curves through the woods, it was shaded now by an emerald arch of evergreens, now by a royal crimson canopy of maple branches, while patches of buff, orange, and dull red commingled where other trees interlaced with these to whisper woodland secrets.

But the boys soon understood what Doc meant when he spoke of their having "a bracing ride in more senses than one;" for the motion of the wagon was a giddy series of jolts and bounces, with just sufficient interval between each shock for them to brace themselves, with stiffened backbones, for the next upheaval. They had already begun, as Royal said, "to have kinks in all their limbs," when Lin suddenly announced,—

"Yon's a bit o' corduroy road, I declar'!"

He pointed with his whip ahead, and the travellers shot out their necks to see this novel highway. It extended for about a quarter of a mile over a swamp, and spoke volumes for the energy and ingenuity of the hardy lumbermen who constructed it.

These brawny heroes, who are fine types of American grit and manhood, when clearing a broad track over which their great timber logs could be hauled from the depths of the forest to the landing on some big river, had found the swampy tracts an impassable obstacle for animals trammelled with harness and a heavy load.

They bridged them by laying down logs cut to even lengths in a slightly slanting position across the way for the entire extent of miry ground. Each piece of timber was tightly wedged in by its fellow; nevertheless, there was a space of several inches between their rounded tops. Hence the track presented a striped appearance, which suggested to some spirited genius among woodsmen its name of "corduroy road."

"Well, Neal, do you think you can tell your folks a thing or two about forest travelling when you get back to England?" asked Doc, when the order of march was changed, young Farrar and the Sinclairs turning out to do their share of tramping, while the doctor, Cyrus, and the guides benefited by "a lift."

"I rather think I can," answered Neal; "but goodness! I feel as if there were aches and bruises all over me. Once or twice my head seemed jumping straight off my shoulders. No more going in a wagon over corduroy roads for me! I'd rather be leg-weary any day."

The travellers halted that evening about five o'clock on the banks of a lonely stream. The guides pitched the two tents—Joe had provided one for his party—facing each other on a patch of clearing, with a space of about fifteen feet between them, in the centre of which blazed a roaring camp-fire. Now all the axes and knifes among the band were in demand for cutting and sharpening stakes and ridge-poles on which to stretch their canvas.

Moreover, no evergreen boughs could be procured for beds; and the boys had to work with a will, helping Uncle Eb and Joe to cut bundles of the long, rank grass that grew by the water to form a bed for their tired bodies.

Every one was camp-hungry, as they had not halted for a meal since leaving the settlement. After a splendid supper of venison, broiled over sizzling logs, bread, and fried potatoes,—for they had added to their stores at the farm,—they had a glorious social hour by the camp-fire. Joe got off any amount of "ripping" stories; and the sound of many a jolly chorus, led by Cyrus, and swelled by the musical efforts of the entire crew, mingled with the lonely rustle of the night wind among faded and drifting leaves.

When Doc's summons came to turn in, they stretched themselves upon the grassy beds, not undressing, as the night was chilly and the temporary quarters were not so snug as their previous ones. Still in their warm jerseys, trousers, woollen stockings, and knitted caps, with the heat from the piled-up camp-fire streaming under the raised flaps of the tents, they slept as cosily as if they lay on spring mattresses, surrounded by pictured walls.



CHAPTER XI.

BEAVER WORKS.

About noon on the following day they were obliged to bid farewell to Lin Hathaway, his wagon and horses, as the logging-road went no farther. The young settler turned homeward rather regretfully. It might be many months again before he got a chance of talking to anybody beyond his father and mother, and the boys had brought a dash of outside life into his woodland solitude.

The travellers proceeded on foot through a dense forest, which, luckily for Dol, had little undergrowth and mostly a soft carpet of moss or dry pine needles. Still they had plenty of climbing over windfalls, with many rough pokes and jibes from forward boughs and rotten limbs, to rob the way of sameness. Through this labyrinth they were safely piloted by Uncle Eb and Joe, the latter with his compass in his hand, and the former simply studying the "Indian's compass," which is observing how the moss grows upon the tree-trunks, there being always a greater quantity on the side which faces north.

Before nightfall they reached another log cabin, tenanted by a man who had just settled down for the purpose of clearing up a farm. Here they were lodged for the night, without trouble of making camp.

The third day of their journey was marked by two sensations. They halted for a short rest at a point where there was an extensive break in the forest. Scarcely had they emerged from the gloom of a dense growth of cedars, when Dol exclaimed.—

"Good gracious! That looks as if people had been building a jolly high railroad out here."

On the right rose a bare, steep ridge of sand and gravel, nearly ninety feet in height, and closely resembling a railway embankment.

"Well, boy," laughed Dr. Phil, "if that's a railroad, Nature built it, and by a mighty curious process too. The sand, rocks, and gravel of which it is mostly formed must have been swept here by a great rush of waters that once prevailed over this land. We call the ridge a 'Horseback.' If you like, we'll climb to the top of it, after we've had our snack [lunch], and you can get a peep at the surrounding country."

So they did. The top was level, and wide enough for two carriages to drive abreast; and the view from it was one which could never be forgotten. Around them were millions of acres of forest land, beautiful with the contrasts of October; here dipping into a cedar valley, in the midst of which they saw the silver smile of a woodland lake, there rising into a hill crowned with towering pines, some of them over a hundred feet in height.

But, most thrilling sight of all, they beheld, only half a dozen miles away, rising in sublime grandeur against the sky, the mountain of mountains in Maine,—great Katahdin. They had caught glimpses of its curved line of peaks before. Now they saw its forests, and the rugged slides where avalanches of bowlders and earth from the top had ploughed heavily downward, sweeping away all growth.

Cyrus lifted his hat, and waved it at the distant mass.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "There's the home of storms! There's old Katahdin! The Indians named it Ktaadn 'the biggest mountain.'"

"Want to hear the Indian legend about it, lads?" asked Dr. Phil.

A general chirp of assent was his reply, and the doctor began:—

"Well, when the redskins owned these forests, they believed that the summit of Katahdin was the home of their evil spirit, or, as they call him, 'The Big Devil.' He was named Pamolah. And he was a mighty unpleasant sort of neighbor. Once, so tradition says, he ran away with a beautiful Indian maiden, and carried her up to his lonely lair among those peaks. When her tribe tried to rescue her, he let loose great storms upon them, his artillery being thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, before which they were forced to flee helter-skelter. An old red chief long ago told me the story, and added gravely that 'it was sartin true, for han'some squaw always catch 'em debil.'

"The foundation of the legend lies in the fact that there really is a very curious granite basin among Katahdin's peaks, and it is the birthplace of most storms which sweep over our State. I myself have seen clouds forming in it, when I made an ascent of the mountain in my younger days, and whirling out in all directions. The roar of its winds may sometimes be heard miles away. There are several ponds in the basin; one of them, a tiny, clear lake, without any visible outlet, is Pamolah's fishing-ground. That's the yarn about the mountain as I heard it."



"Ain't it a'most time for us to be gittin' down from this Horseback, Doc?" asked Joe, who had been listening with the others. "I thought we'd reach the farm you're heading for to-night, but we're half a dozen miles off it yet; and we can't do more'n another mile or two afore it'll be time to halt and make camp. There's some pretty bad travelling and a plaguy bit of swamp ahead."

"I guess you're about right, Joe," said Doc, rising with alacrity from the stone where he had seated himself while telling his yarn.

Joe's bad travelling meant a great deal of tripping and floundering through soft mud and mire, with slippery moss-stones sandwiched in, and dwarfed bushes which ran along the ground, and twisted themselves in an almost impassable tangle. These had a knack of catching a fellow's feet, and causing him to sprawl forward on his face and hands, whereupon his knapsack would hit him an astounding thwack on the back.

After three-quarters of an hour of this fun, very muddy, clammy with perspiration, and thoroughly winded, the party reached firmer ground, and the guides called a halt.

"Guess we'd better rest a bit," said Joe, "afore we go farther. There's nothing in forest travelling that'll take the breath out of a man like crossing a swamp," eying compassionately the city folk; for he himself was as "fit" as when he started. "Then we'd better follow that stream till we strike a good place for a camping-ground. What say, Doc?"

Dr. Phil, as captain, signified his assent. After a short breathing-spell he again gave the command, "Forward!" And his company pushed on into the woods, following the course of a dark stream which had gurgled through the swamp.

"There used to be an old beaver-dam somewheres about here," broke forth Joe presently, when they had made about a quarter of a mile, the younger guide taking the lead, for he was evidently more at home in this part of the forest land than his senior, Uncle Eb. "Hullo, now! there it is. Look, gentlemen!"

He pointed to a curved bank of brushwood, mostly alder branches, piled together in curious topsyturvy fashion, which formed a dam across the stream. It bristled with sticks, poking out and up in every direction; for the bushy ends of the boughs had been heavily plastered with mud and stones, to keep them down.

"That a beaver-dam!" gasped Neal in amazement. "Why, I always had an idea that beavers were half human in intelligence, and wove their branches in and out in a sort of neat basketwork when making dams. That's a funny rough-and-tumble looking old pile."

"It's a good water-tight dam, for all that," answered Cyrus. "And don't you begin to underrate Mr. Beaver's intelligence until you see more of his works. I've torn the bottom out of a dam like this on a cold, rainy night,—beavers like rainy nights for work,—and then hidden myself in some bushes to watch the result. It was a trial of strength and patience, I assure you, to remain there for six mortal hours,—though I had rubber overalls on,—with wet twigs and leaves slapping my face. But the sight I saw was more wonderful than anything I could have imagined. There was a cloudy, watery moon; and shortly after it rose, five beavers appeared upon the dam, scrambling up and down, and examining the great hole through which the water was fast leaking out of their pond. Then, following a big fellow, who was evidently the boss beaver, they swam to the bank. He stationed himself near a tree about twenty inches in circumference, and his four boys at once started to fell it. I tell you they worked like hustlers, each one sawing on it in turn with his sharp teeth, and sometimes two of them together on different parts of the trunk.

"At last the tree—it was an ash—fell, toppling into the water just where the beavers wanted it. They pushed and tugged it down-stream for about ten yards, to the dam, and propped it against the opening which I had made. I couldn't see the rest of the operations clearly; but I caught glimpses of them, marching about on their hind-legs, carrying mud snug up to their chins like this," here Cyrus folded his arms across his chest. "And before daybreak that dam was perfectly repaired, with never a leak in it.

"You know they build the dams in very shallow water, only a few inches deep; and they generally roll in a couple of long logs for a solid foundation. It was one of these which I had torn out. Now, Neal, what do you say about the beaver's intelligence?"

"If I didn't know you, Cyrus, I'd say you were making up as you went along," answered Neal. "It seems one of those things which a fellow can scarcely believe in. Hulloa! What's that?"

A loud report, like the bang of a gun, made all the boys, who had been standing very quietly, gazing at the dam, suddenly jump.

"It's only a beaver striking the water with his tail," laughed Cyrus. "He has been swimming about somewhere up-stream, and has scented us, and dived. I have heard one do that a dozen times in the night, if he detected the presence of man; but it's very unusual in the daytime, for they rarely venture out in broad light. In diving, if suddenly alarmed, they strike the surface of the water a tremendous whack with their tails, as a signal of alarm, making this report, which in still weather resounds for a great distance.

"I'm very glad you heard it, boys; for your chances of seeing the master beaver or any of his colony are mighty slim. But we'll probably come on their lodge a little higher up."

Above the shallow water where the dam was built, the stream widened into a broad, deep pool. About fifty yards ahead, in the centre of this, was a tiny island. On its extreme edge Joe pointed out the beaver lodge. It was shaped something like a huge beehive, being about a dozen feet in diameter and five feet high. The outside seemed to be entirely covered with mud and fibrous roots, through which the sticks which formed its framework poked out here and there.

"The doors are all underwater," said Cyrus, "and so far down that they'll be beneath the ice when the stream freezes in winter. Otherwise the beavers could not reach their pile of food-wood, which they keep at the bottom, and would starve to death. They are clerks of the weather, if you like. They seem to know when the first hard frost is coming, and sink their stores a day or two before. Man has not yet discovered their mysterious knack of sinking wood, and keeping it stationary through many months.

"They feed on the inner bark of poplar, white birch, and willow trees. In autumn they fell these along the banks, generally so that they will fall into the water, tug and push them down-stream, and float them near to their lodges. If the trees are too big to be easily handled, they saw them into convenient lengths."

"I call it tough luck, not being able to get a sight of the animals, after seeing so much of their works," grumbled Royal.

"Ye might wait here till midnight, and not have any better," said Joe. "That fellow's tail was like a fire-alarm to them. They ain't to home now, you bet! They've dusted out of their house as if it was on fire; and they've either dived to the bottom, or hidden themselves in holes along the bank. Guess we'd better be moving on. It's a'most time to think about making camp."

"The beavers have been working here!" exclaimed the guide a few minutes later, as he strode ahead. "These white birches were felled by 'em; and a dandy job they did too."

He pointed to two slim birches which lay prone with their tops in the water, and to a third, the trunk of which was partly sawn through in more than one place. The ground was strewn with little clippings of timber, bearing the saw-marks of the beavers' teeth. The boys gathered them up as curiosities.

"Oh, the skilful little animals can beat this work by long odds!" exclaimed Doc. "These trunks only measure from eight to twelve inches in circumference. I've seen a tree fully two feet round which was felled by them. Say, Joe! don't you think we'd better camp to-night somewhere on the brulee?"

"Just what I'm planning, Doc," answered Joe. "We must be pretty near it now."

A few minutes afterwards the party filed out of the dense woods, passed through a grove of young spruces, forded a brook which emptied itself into the stream they were following, and came upon a scene blasted, barren, and unutterably dreary.

The band of boys, who, in spite of swamps and jungles, had learned to love the forest dearly, for its many beauties, and for the wild offspring with which it teemed, sorrowfully gasped, as if they saw the skeleton of a friend.



CHAPTER XII.

"GO IT, OLD BRUIN!"

Before them lay a ruined tract of country, extending northward farther than eye could reach. It is called by Maine woodsmen a brulee, name borrowed from their French-Canadian neighbors, who dwell across the boundary line which separates the Dominion from the United States.

The word signifies "burnt tract;" but it gives a feeble idea of the fire-smitten, blackened region on which the lads looked.

The forest until now had been a wilderness truly, but a wilderness where every kind and size of growth, from the giant pine to the creeping wintergreen and shaded mosses, mingled in beautiful confusion. Here it became a desert. For the terrible forest fires, the woodsman's tragic enemy, had swept over it not long before, devastating an area of many square miles. Millions of dollars worth of valuable timber had been reduced to rotting embers. Storm-defying pines had crashed to the earth, and were overridden by the flames in their wild rush onward. Sometimes only a smutty stump showed where they had stood; sometimes, robbed of life and every limb, portions of the fire-eaten trunks still remained erect,—bare, blackened poles. All smaller growth, and even the surface of the ground, parched by summer heats, had burned like tinder. Rocks and stones were baked and crumbling.

"Boys, that's the most mournful sight a woodsman can see," said Doc, looking away over the wrecked region, touched with golden lights from an October sunset. "It makes one who loves the woods feel as if he had lost a living friend."

"Well, 'tain't no manner o' use to fret over it," declared Joe energetically. "Nature don't waste time in fretting, you bet! She starts in and tries to cover the stripped ground, as if she was sort of ashamed to have it seen."

The guide pointed earthward. At his feet a dwarfed growth of blueberry bushes and tiny trees was already springing up to screen the unsightly, ash-strewn land.

"True enough, Joe! Nature is a grand one for remedies," answered the doctor. "Still, it will be half a century or more before she can raise a timber growth here again. Hulloa! Dol, what are you fellows up to?"

While his elders were studying the brulee, Dol, who objected to dreary sights, had marched down to the brink of the stream, accompanied by Royal's young brothers, Will and Martin Sinclair. The little river gurgled and frisked along beside the burnt tract, like a line of life bordering death. It seemed to the boys to prattle about its victory over the flames when it stopped their sweeping course, so that the woods on its opposite bank were uninjured, as were those beyond the brook in the rear.

"We're studying the ways of the great sea-serpent!" shouted back Dol, who was splashing about in a sedgy pool.

By and by when the guides had finished their work of making camp, when they had pitched the tents, cut boughs for beds and fuel in the spruce grove behind, and were cooking an odorous supper, the three juveniles came slowly towards the camp-fire from the water.

"What on earth have you got there, young one?" asked Dr. Phil; for Adolphus Farrar was bareheaded, and carried his hat very gingerly, with its corners clutched together to form a bag.

"The big sea-serpent himself," answered Dol mysteriously.

Of a sudden he opened his dripping hat, and spilled out a small water-snake, about ten inches long, upon the doctor's lap.

There was a great roar of laughter, in which Dol's abettors, Will and Martin, joined with cheerful shouts. The little joke had the effect of winning everybody's thoughts from roaring flames, wrecked forests, and the dreary brulee. Uncle Eb killed the snake, maintaining that water-snakes were "plaguy p'isonous," while Cyrus scouted the idea. The supper that evening was a merry enough meal. The camp, lit by the ruddy glow from its great fire, looked an oasis of light, warmth, and jollity in the black and burnt desert.

The darky, hearing Cyrus declare that he was fearfully hungry, mixed some flapjacks to form a second course, after the venison steaks and potatoes. He had exhausted his stock of maple sugar, but he produced a small wooden keg of the apparently inexhaustible molasses.

"He! he! he! Dat jest touches de spot, don't it?" he chuckled, when, having carefully served each member of the party, he seated himself about three feet from the camp-fire, with a round dozen of the thin cakes for his own eating.

He coated them with the thick molasses, and set the keg down side by side with a bag of potatoes which had been brought from the settlement.

There these provisions remained when, earlier than usual, the party turned in, and stretched their tired limbs to rest, lying down, as they had done before when sleeping under canvas, with all their garments on save coats and moccasins. Whether Uncle Eb forgot his "m'lasses," or whether he purposely left it without, there not being a spare inch of room in the small tents, no one then or afterwards inquired.

As a result of the jolly intimacy that had sprung up between the two companies during the few days when they had all things in common, the boys disposed of themselves for the night as they pleased. Neal turned in with the doctor, Royal, and Joe, the four stretching themselves on the evergreen boughs, with their feet to the opening of the tent, and their rifles and ammunition within reach. Of course the Winchesters were empty, it being a strict rule that firearms should not be brought into camp loaded.

The younger Sinclairs, with Cyrus, Dol, and Uncle Eb, occupied the other tent.

It seemed to Neal that he had hardly slept one hour,—probably it was nearer to three,—during which time he had been dreaming with vague foreshadowings of the final and crowning sport of the trip, the grand moose-stalking, and of Herb Heal, the mighty hunter, when he was awakened by a shrill scream just outside the canvas. He started, with his heart going whackety-whack. The cry was sudden and intensely startling, appearing twice as loud as it really was when it broke the pathetic stillness of the brulee, where not a tree rustled or twig snapped, and the night wind only sighed faintly and fitfully through the newly springing growth.

Again sounded that startling screech; and yet again, making a dreary, piercing din.

"By all that's funny! it's another coon," gasped Neal; and he gently pinched the shoulder of Joe, who lay on his left.

"Joe!" he whispered. "Wake up! There's a raccoon just outside the tent. I heard his cry."

The guide was awake and alert in an instant. So, too, was Dr. Phil.

"What's up, boys?" asked the latter, hearing a murmur.

"There's a coon close by," said Neal again. "Listen to him!"

Even while he spoke, young Farrar caught sight of two feathered things hopping along the avenue of light which lay between him and the camp-fire, the red flare of the flames mingling with the white radiance of a cloudless moon. At the same time the screech sounded and resounded.

"Coon!" exclaimed Joe derisively. "That's no coon. It's only a little owl. Bless ye! I've had five or six of 'em come right into this tent of a night, and ding away at me till I had to talk to 'em with the rifle to scare 'em off. I'll give 'em a dose o' lead now if they don't scoot mighty quick; that'll stop their song an' dance."

"Their cry is pretty much like a raccoon's, Neal," said Doc. "Only it's a great deal weaker. Lie down, boy. Go to sleep, and don't mind them."

The owls perhaps apprehended danger. At all events, they were silent for a while; and in three minutes each occupant of the tent was fast asleep again, with the exception of Neal. The sharp awakening had upset his nerves a bit. He obeyed the doctor, and hugged his blankets round him, hoping sleep would return; but he lay with eyes narrowed into two slits, peeping at the ruddy camp-fire, involuntarily listening for the screeching of the birds, and wishing that he had not been such a greenhorn as to disturb his comrades for nothing. Royal, who lay on his right, was of a less excitable temperament. Although he had been awakened, he was now snoring lustily, insomnia being a rare affliction in camps.

"What's that?"

About half an hour had passed when Neal Farrar suddenly and sharply rapped out these words close to Joe's ear. He felt certain that he would not now bring upon him the woodsman's good-natured scorn for making a disturbance about nothing. A heavy, stealthy tread, as of some big animal, was crushing the pygmy bushes near the tent. Immediately afterwards he saw an uncouth black shape in the lane of light between himself and the fire. It disappeared while his heart was giving one jump, and he heard a dull, mumbling noise, such as a pig might make when rooting amid rubbish, varied with an occasional low growl.

Joe was already awake. His hunter's instinct told him that something truly exciting was on now.

"My cracky! I b'lieve it's a bear!" he muttered, forming his words away down in his throat, so that Neal only caught the last one. "Keep still as death!"

The guide reached out a long arm, and clutched his rifle. Hurriedly he jammed half a dozen cartridges into its magazine. Then lightly and silently, as if he was made of cork, he got upon his feet, and bounded out of the tent, Neal copying his actions nimbly and noiselessly as he could; though, in his excitement, he only succeeded in getting two cartridges into his Winchester.

Royal's snoring ceased. Doc's eager question, "What's up now, boys?" reached the two just as they quitted shelter, and passed into the broad moonlight, crossed with red gleams from their fire.

"A bear!" yelled Joe in answer, his rifle and he breaking silence together.

Three times the Winchester sharply cracked.

Then with a mad "Halloo!" the guide seized a flaming stick from the fire, and, swinging it above his head, started after the big black animal of which Neal had caught a glimpse before. He now saw it plainly as, already fifty yards ahead, it made off at a plunging gallop across the moonlit brulee.

Young Farrar had been the champion runner of his school, and he blessed his trained legs for giving him a prominent part in the wild chase that followed. Still imitating the woodsman, he pulled another half-lighted stick from the camp-fire, and waved it in a frenzy of excitement, while he ran like a buck at Joe's side.

"Tumble out! Tumble out, boys! A bear! A bear!" now rang from one tent to another.

In two minutes every camper, in his stocking feet, just as he had risen from his bed, was tearing across the brulee in the wake of Bruin, yelling, leaping, and swinging smouldering firebrands.

It was a scene and a chase such as the boys, in their most far-fetched dreams, had never pictured,—the white moonlight glimmering on the black stumps and tottering trunks of the ruined tract, the hunted bear plunging off among them, frightened by the shouting and the lights, the heavy, lumbering gallop enabling it at first to distance its pursuers.

Owing to their fleetness and the odds they had at the start, the guide and Neal kept far ahead of their comrades. The noise which Bruin made as he lumbered over the pygmy growth, and the charred, rotting timber that littered the ground beneath it, were quiet enough to guide Joe unerringly in the bear's wake, even when that bulky shape was not distinguishable.

"What's this?" screeched the woodsman suddenly, as he stumbled upon something at his feet. "By gracious! it's our keg of m'lasses. He made off with that, and has dropped it out o' sheer fright, or because he's weakening. I know I hit him twice when I fired; but he's not hurt too badly to run, or to fight like a fiend if we come to close quarters. Like as not 'twill be a narrow squeak with us if we tackle him. If you're scared a little bit, Neal, let up, an' I'll finish him alone."

"Scared!" Neal flung the word back with scorn, as if he was returning a blow. For the life of him he could not bring out another syllable, going at a faster rate than ever he had done in the most stubbornly contested handicap. The strong-winded guide rapped out his sentences as he ran, apparently without waste of breath.

The feverish enthusiasm of the hunter, which he had never felt before, was now alive in Neal. His blood raced through his veins like liquid fire. He had been long enough in Maine to know that in wreaking vengeance on Bruin for many misdeeds he would be acting in the interests of justice. For the black bear is still such a master pest to the settlers who are trying to establish their farms amid the forests where it roams, that the State has outlawed the beast, and pays a bounty for its skin.

Joe thought little about this; for a gentleman whom he had guided early in the summer had lately written to him, offering a price of fifteen dollars for a good bearskin.

Here was the woodsman's golden opportunity—an opportunity for which he had been thirsting since the receipt of that letter.



He already regarded his triumph over the bear as secure, and its hide as forfeited. He nearly caused Neal Farrar to burst a blood-vessel from the combined effects of struggling laughter and running, when he began to apostrophize the flying foe with grim humor, thus:—

"Go it, old Bruin! Go it while ye can! There ain't a hair on yer back that b'longs to ye!"

But it soon became evident that the bear couldn't go on much longer at this breakneck pace. Its pursuers heard its steps with increasing distinctness, and then its labored breathing. They were gaining on it fast.

The brute came into full view about forty yards ahead, as it ascended a slight elevation, crowned with blasted tree trunks.

"I'll draw bead on him from here," said Joe, stopping short. "Get ready to fire, lad, if he turns. It'll take lots o' lead to finish that fellow."

Twice Joe's rifle spoke again. One shot took effect. There was a fearful growl from the beast, but it was not yet mortally wounded.

Maddened and desperate, it wheeled about, and came straight for its pursuers. Again the guide fired. Still the bear advanced, gnashing its teeth and mumbling horribly; Neal saw its black shape not thirty yards from him.

"Shoot! shoot, boy!" screamed Joe. "Or give me your rifle. I haven't got a charge left!"

For half a minute Farrar shook all over as with ague. His nostrils felt choked. His mouth was wide open in his efforts to breathe. His heart pounded like a sledge-hammer. With that mumbling brute advancing upon him, he felt as if he couldn't fire so as to hit a haystack or a flock of hens at a barn-door.