en the county was first settled the
pioneers found the ponds and streams in peaceful possession of an
ancient trapper whom they called Daddy Goss. Trapping was his business;
he did nothing else. Every fall and winter while he was tending his trap
lines he used to stay for a week or a month at a time at the settlers'
houses. Frequently the wife of a settler at whose house he was staying
would have to take drastic measures to get rid of him; no gentler
measures than taking his chair and his plate away from the table or
putting his bundle of things out on the doorstep would move him. "As
slow to take the hint as old Daddy Goss," came to be a local proverb.

One December while he was staying at the Murch farm he fell sick with a
heavy cold, and while he lay in bed he fretted constantly about his
traps. At last he offered Billy Murch, who was then fourteen years old,
half of all the animals that might be in them if he Would go out and
fetch them home. The line of traps, he said, began at a large pine-tree
near the head of Stoss Pond and thence extended round about through the
then unbroken forest for a distance of perhaps fifteen miles to a
birch-bark camp on Lurvey's Stream that the old trapper had built to
shelter himself from storms two years before.

Billy wanted to go but his mother would not consent to his going alone.
So he talked the matter over with the old Squire, who was a year older
than Billy, and offered him half the profits if he would accompany him;
and the result was that the two boys took the old man's flintlock gun
and set off at daylight the following morning. They were not to stop to
skin any animals that they found in the traps, but were to make bunches
of them and carry them home on their backs. The old trapper would not
trust them either to skin the catch or to reset the traps. Since there
were only two or three inches of snow on the ground, they did not have
to use snowshoes and hoped therefore that they should return by evening.
They found the first trap on Stoss Pond and from there followed the line
without much difficulty, for Daddy Goss had made a trail by spotting
trees with his hatchet. Moreover, the marten traps were "boxed" into
spruce-trees at a height of two or three feet from the ground and could
easily be seen.

There is an old saying among trappers that nothing catches game like a
neglected trap; and that time at least the adage was correct. The boys
found a marten in the second trap a