e sufferin'."

This was a long speech for Caleb, but it was really less connected
than here given. Yan had to keep him going with occasional questions.
This he followed up.

"What do you think about bows and arrows, Mr. Clark?"

"I wouldn't like to use them on big game like Bear and Deer, but I'd
be glad if shotguns was done away with and small game could be killed
only with arrows. They are either sure death or clear miss. There's no
cripples to get away and die. You can't fire an arrow into a flock of
birds and wipe out one hundred, like you can with one of them blame
scatterguns. It's them things that is killing off all the small game.
Some day they'll invent a scattergun that is a pump repeater like them
new rifles, and when every fool has one they'll wonder where all the
small game has gone to.

"No, sir, I'm agin them. Bows and arrows is less destructful an' calls
for more Woodcraft an' give more sport--that is, for small game.
Besides, they don't make that awful racket, an' you know who is the
party that owns the shot, for every arrow is marked."

Yan was sorry that Caleb did not indorse the arrow for big game, too.

The Trapper was well started now; he seemed ready enough with
information to-day, and Yan knew enough to "run the rapids on the
freshet."

"How do you make a ketchalive?"

"What for?"

"Oh, Mink."

"They ain't fit to catch now, and the young ones need the mothers."

"I wouldn't keep it. I only want to make a drawing."

"Guess that won't harm it if you don't keep it too long. Have ye any
boards? We used to chop the whole thing out of a piece of Balsam wood
or White Pine, but the more stuff ye find ready-made the easier it is.
Now I'll show you how to make a ketchalive if ye'll promise me never
to miss a day going to it while it is set."

The boys did not understand how any one could miss a day in visiting a
place of so much interest, and readily promised.

So they made a ketchalive, or box-trap, two feet long, using hay wire
to make a strong netting at one end.

"Now," said the trapper, "that will catch Mink, Muskrat, Skunk,
Rabbit--'most anything, 'cording to where you put it and how you bait
it."

"Seems to me the Wakan Rock will be a good place to try."

So the trap was baited with a fish head firmly lashed on the wire
trigger.

In the morning, as Yan approached, he saw that it was sprung. A
peculiar whining and scratching came from it and he shouted in great
excitement: "B