too had failed to recognize any one whom he
had reason to know.

The man by now seemed to have recovered in part. He was looking at the
boys in a peculiar way; Max could not decide on the spur of the moment
whether it was wonder or shrewdness that he saw there as the predominant
trait of the man's features. But at any rate, since he had recovered his
breath to some extent, he should be capable of speaking, and explaining
how it came about he found himself in such a predicament.

"Well, who are you, anyway?" demanded Max, throwing as much sternness
into his voice as he could. "Give an account of yourself, and tell us
why you were creeping about here like a thief in the night?"

"What! me a thief?" shrilled the man, as though, again excited by the
very idea of such a base accusation; "I never had that name, young
feller. Them that knows Jake Storms say he's an honest man, if ever
there was one. I'm only a guide, and a trapper, but nobody ever yet
caught me thievin' or poachin', I'd have yuh know."

"Where's your home, Jake Storms?" continued Max.

"If yuh mean whar do I hang out, it's this way," explained the other.
"Last summer I was up at Paul Smith's place, workin' for the hotel. I
heard some tall stories about the country around old Mount Tom, how full
of fur animals it was, and so I made up my mind to spend the winter
hereabouts. I built me a cabin away up on the other side of the
mountain, and was agoin' to start settin' my traps when I got word that
a gentleman wanted me to come down to Lathrop and git him. Yuh see, his
doctor advised that he spend the winter in the mountains, and he thought
of me, beca'se we'd been in the woods a heap of times in past years. So
I was headin' for Lathrop by a trail I'd run across that took around the
mountain, and meanin' to keep on as long as I could durin' the night,
when all at once something flew up and hit me ker-slap! Say, I thought
it was an earthquake, sure I did. And then I found myself hangin' upside
down, with all the blood runnin' into my head. What's it mean, young
fellers; I give yuh my word I don't get the hang o' it at all."

Max was not surprised to hear the man speak in this fashion. He had
already made up his mind, after that one good look at the other's face,
the prisoner of the barrel trap was a pretty "slick article," as Steve
would have expressed it. And caught in the act, as he had been, it was
to be expected that the fellow would have some kind of rea