good detectives, we would. I've done a lot of wondering about
Pat's partner and what sort of a fellow he would prove to be and whether
or not we'd like him. And to think it's Alec! If you weren't such a
young and tender innocent I'd throw you in the snow and give you a
shampoo. What do you say, Walt, to doing it anyway?"

"Come on!" cried Pat, "the two of you, or all three!"

Upton shook his head mournfully. "I'd like to, but it wouldn't be right.
He isn't as big as the two of us, and so it wouldn't do at all. It would
be the same as a big fellow picking on a little one. You know I thrashed
him once for doing that very thing, and now if we should turn around and
do it I'm afraid the force of my beautiful example would be wholly
destroyed. I tell you what, you do it alone, Hal."

"He's too small," declared Hal. "That's why I wanted you to help. Then
my conscience would be only half guilty. I'm going to let him off this
time with just a snowball."

Suiting his action to the word he landed a big soft snowball full on the
side of Pat's head. Pat made a rush for him, but Walter thrust out a
foot and sent him headlong into the snow, and before he could regain his
feet Hal was on him endeavoring to wash his face with snow. In a second
there was the liveliest kind of a snow fight, Upton and Sparrer yelling
encouragement with absolute impartiality. It ended with Hal's smothered
cry of "enough" and Pat's allowing him up just in time to see Walter and
then Sparrer unceremoniously pitched into the snow, by way of showing
that all Scouts are equal, Pat explained, as he rubbed their faces.

Panting and glowing from the frolic they put out the fire built to heat
their soup and were ready to hit the trail again. From this point on the
snow-shoes were an absolute necessity, for they left the lumber trail
for another ten miles through the woods. This time they were not
dependent on the blazed trees as they had been when they went that way
in the fall, for some one had been over the trail since the last
snowfall, evidently coming out from Little Goose. Pat studied the tracks
for a few minutes. Then his face cleared. "It was Big Jim," said he. "I
wonder now if he took a look in the Hollow to see how Alec was getting
on. He may have been over to the Gillicuddy camp, the trail from which
comes in at the pond, you remember, but I have an idea he swung around
to see Alec. I wonder now where he saw that fox. I just took it for
granted that