ed until his fingers ached and then Paul relieved him. It
fell to the younger boy's lot to succeed. A bright spark flying forth
rested a moment among the lightest and dryest of the twigs, igniting
there. A tiny point of flame appeared, then grew and leaped up. In a few
moments the great pile of brushwood was in a roaring blaze, and then the
boys cooked their fish over the coals. They ate it all with supreme
content, and they believed they could feel the blood flowing in a new
current through their veins and their strength growing, too.

But they knew that they would have to prepare for the future and draw
upon all their resources of mind and body. Their hook and line was but a
slender appliance and they might not have such luck with it again. Paul
suggested that they make a fish trap, of sticks tied together with
strips cut from their clothing, and put it in the creek, and Henry
thought it was a good idea, too. So they agreed to try it on the morrow,
if they should not be found meanwhile, and then they debated the subject
of snares.

The undergrowth was swarming with rabbits, and they would make most
toothsome food. Rabbits they must have, and again Henry led the way. He
selected a small clear spot near the thick undergrowth where a rabbit
would naturally love to make his nest and around a circle about six
inches in diameter he drove a number of smooth pegs. Then he tied a
strong cord made of strips of their clothing to one end of a stout bush,
which he bent over until it curved in a semicircle. The other end of the
cord was drawn in a sliding loop around the pegs, and was attached to a
little wooden trigger, set in the center of the inclosure.

The slightest pressure upon this trigger would upset it, cause the noose
to slip off the pegs and close with a jerk around the neck of anything
that might have its head thrust into the inclosure. The bush, too, would
fly back into place and there would be the intruder, really hanged by
himself. It was the common form of snare, devised for small game by the
boys of early Kentucky, and still used by them.

Henry and Paul made four of these ingenious little contrivances, and
baited them with bruised pieces of the small plantain leaves that the
rabbits love. Then they contemplated their work again with satisfaction.
But Paul suddenly began to look rueful.

"If we have to pay out part of our clothes every time we get a dinner we
soon won't have any left," he said.

Henry only l