to study him, and he found the task one well worthy of his best
efforts. In the beginning he determined that Obed was no ordinary chap,
but possessed of sterling characteristics. He waited for the
conversation to get further along, confident that the other had a
surprise up his sleeve which he might condescend to share with them,
after he had become fully satisfied they were to be trusted, and that he
could look upon them in the light of friends.

"Nary a Grimes 'cept me inside o' twenty miles o' here, and that's a
fact," he assured Bandy-legs, after finishing his drinking. "Fact is,
most o' the family don't know jest where I'm at; and say, between us, I
ain't a carin' about tellin' 'em."

That looked a bit singular, Bandy-legs thought. His suspicions returned
again, though with diminished force; for somehow he could not look into
that frank and even merry face of the woods boy and actually believe he
was "off-color" in any way.

"But what do you do with yourself all alone, I'd like to know?" burst
out impetuous Steve. "Are you making a living playing at guide for
parties of tourists, or fishermen and hunters? And, say, you don't mean
to tell me you stay all alone up in this wilderness right through the
winter?"

Obed Grimes nodded his head cheerfully.

"I ain't got any choice in the matter, yuh see," he told them,
mysteriously; "just _got_ to stay. Why, it would bust the hull business
to smash if I 'lowed myself to skip out, even for a week or two. I'm
tied down to it, that's right."

Bandy-legs exchanged a significant look Toby Jucklin. He scratched his
head with the air of one who found himself up against a hard, knotty
problem. Apparently, if the stranger in camp was trying to mystify them,
he had already succeeded in tangling up the wits of Bandy-legs completely.

Max continued to sit there and take it all in. There was no need of his
saying anything so long as the other fellows had embarked on the task of
drawing Obed out and learning just what he was doing to keep him
marooned up there summer and winter, like a regular old recluse, or
woodchuck.

"But there must be heaps and heaps of snow here winters," suggested
Steve; "and I'd think you'd find it pretty hard getting about."

"Oh! not so bad when you have snow-shoes" Obed told him, with a shrug of
his shoulders, and another attack on the contents of his tin panninkin.

"'Course not," Steve hastened to say, as though he had guessed that this
would be