sprang on shore, and Jim followed him into the woods.
They soon found track of the game by the blood that dabbled the bushes,
and stumbled upon the beautiful creature stone dead--fallen prone, with
his legs doubled under him. Jim swung him across his shoulders, and,
tottering behind Mr. Balfour, bore him back to the boat. Placing him in
the bottom, the two men resumed their seats, and Jim, after carefully
working himself out of the inlet into the river, settled down to a long,
swift stroke that bore them back to the camp just as the moon began to
show herself above the trees.

It was a night long to be remembered by the boys, a fitting inauguration
of the lawyer's vacation, and an introduction to woodcraft from which,
in after years, the neophytes won rare stores of refreshment and health.

Mr. Benedict received them with hearty congratulations, and the perfect
sleep of the night only sharpened their desire for further depredations
upon the game that lived around them, in the water and on the land.

As the days passed on, they caught trout until they were tired of the
sport; they floated for deer at night; they took weary tramps in all
directions, and at evening, around the camp-fires, rehearsed their
experiences.

During all this period, Mr. Balfour was watching Harry Benedict. The
contrast between the lad and his own son was as marked as that between
the lad's father and himself, but the positions were reversed. Harry
led, contrived, executed. He was positive, facile, amiable, and the boys
were as happy together as their parents were. Jim had noticed the
remarkable interest that Mr. Balfour took in the boy, and had begun to
suspect that he entertained intentions which would deprive the camp of
one of its chief sources of pleasure.

One day when the lawyer and his guide were quietly eating their lunch in
the forest, Mr. Balfour went to work, in his quiet, lawyer-like way, to
ascertain the details of Benedict's history; and he heard them all.
When he heard who had benefited by his guide's inventions, and learned
just how matters stood with regard to the Belcher rifle, he became, for
the first time since he had been in the woods, thoroughly excited. He
had a law-case before him as full of the elements of romance as any that
he had ever been engaged in. A defrauded inventor, living in the forest
in poverty, having escaped from the insane ward of an alms-house, and
the real owner of patent rights that were a mine of we