his stride. He took a short step to catch his
balance, stumbled and took a beautiful header. At Pat's roar of laughter
the others turned to see two big webs wildly waving above the snow and
nothing more of the unfortunate Hal. Now being plunged head first into
deep snow with a pair of snow-shoes on your feet is a good deal like
being thrown into the water with a life preserver fast to your feet--you
can't get them down. For a few moments the others howled with glee as
they watched the frantically kicking legs and listened to the smothered
appeals for help from the luckless victim. Then Pat reached out and
loosened the shoes, gripped Hal by the ankles and drew him forth, red in
the face from his exertions and spitting out snow. He looked so wholly
bewildered and withal so chagrined and foolish that he was greeted with
a fresh peal of laughter, to which he responded with a sheepish grin as
he tried to get the snow out of his neck and from up his sleeves.

"There's nothing to it, nothing at all!" jeered Walter.

"I didn't know but you thought you heard that black fox down there and
were trying to get him," said Pat.

At that instant Upton involuntarily stepped back, a thing for which
snow-shoes were never designed, and a second later had measured his
length in the snow. Falling at full length he did not disappear as Hal
had done, but he was hardly less helpless. Every effort to help himself
by putting his hands down was futile. He simply buried his arms to the
shoulders in the yielding snow without finding anything on which to get
a purchase. Hal was jubilant.

"When you're down stay down!" he yelped. "Laugh at me, will you?"

Walter had by this time managed to kick his shoes off and once free of
these was soon on his feet and was enjoying the joke as much as any one.
Both he and Hal were up to their hips in the snow, for here among the
evergreens it had not packed and flounder as they would they could not
get out.

The doctor's eyes twinkled as he picked up Hal's shoes and handed them
to him. "Well, boys," said he, "it's high time we were hitting the trail
again. Suppose you put your shoes on, and we'll make up for lost time."

Hal took the shoes and then looked helplessly across at Walter, who had
just secured his, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the
doctor's remark was not so guileless as it seemed.

"How in thunder are we going to?" he demanded, vainly trying to force a
shoe down to meet an uprais