ed foot half-way, in the doing of which he
once more lost his balance.

"I thought I showed you fellows just how to put your shoes on this
morning. A good Scout ought not to have to be shown twice how to do a
simple thing like that," said Pat, without cracking a smile. "What kind
of Scouts are you, anyway, crying for help the first time you tumble in
a little bit of snow?"

"Who's crying for help?" demanded Upton, vainly striving to get a shoe
down where he could get his foot into the fastening. "I wouldn't take
any help now if I thought I'd got to stay here all day. Take that and
that!"

He began to dig furiously with the shoe, throwing the snow with malice
aforethought full in Pat's face. Hal instantly took the cue and there
was a hasty retreat on the part of their tormentors, in the midst of
which Sparrer came to grief and had his turn at the snow-shoer's
baptism. In a few minutes Walter had dug away enough snow to get his
shoes under him and walked forth in triumph, followed by Hal. Sparrer,
anxious to prove himself a good sport, refused all aid. Being small and
light he had not sunk in as the others had and managed to get one shoe
under him. With this for a support he soon had the other fastened. It
was the work of a moment to adjust the first one and he was ready to
take his place in line.

There were no more mishaps and as they tramped on through the great
still woodland the wonder and the beauty of it silenced them, for it
seemed like a vast cathedral in which the human voice would be a
profanation of the solemn hush. Upton knew every foot within a radius of
two miles of Woodcraft Camp, and for five miles in the direction in
which they were heading, and yet not even to Sparrer did the
surroundings seem more strange, such is the alchemy of the snow king to
make the familiar unfamiliar, the commonplace beautiful. So it was that
when at the end of three miles they emerged on the shore of a frozen
sheet of water Walter at first failed utterly to recognize it, and it
was not until Pat made some reference to the huge pickerel Walter had
caught during his first summer at Woodcraft that it dawned on him that
this was the very setback where he had discovered Pat's secret fishing
grounds and on the shore of which he had given Pat his first lesson in
boxing and in the meaning of the word honor.

"I've come over here because Mother insists that a dinner in the woods
is no more complete without a fish course than it wo