r side
partner when you take a notion to go down to the lake."

"Some of you get busy here fixing the fish, if we mean to have them
to-night," remarked Jack, who was too tired to think of doing it
himself.

"Too late for that this evening. We've got supper all ready for you.
The fish will have to keep till to-morrow," announced Bobolink.

"What's this I smell in the air?" demanded Tom. "Don't tell me you've
bagged a deer already?"

"Just what we have!" said Bobolink, his eyes glistening so, that it
required little effort to decide who the lucky hunter was.

"Why, he wasn't away from camp an hour," asserted Phil Towns, "when we
heard him whooping, and in he came with a young buck on his back. I
never thought Bobolink was strong enough to tote that load a mile and
more."

"Huh! I'd have carried in an elephant if it had dropped to my gun, I
felt that good!" declared the happy hunter.

"But all the adventures haven't fallen to you fellows who stayed here
in camp or wandered about in the adjacent woods," announced Tom,
mysteriously.

"What else have you been doing besides catching that dandy mess of
fish?" asked the scout-master, voicing the curiosity of the entire
crowd.

"Say! did you shoot some game, too--a deer, a wildcat, or maybe a big
black bear?" demanded Bobolink, eagerly.

"No, the gun was never fired," continued Tom. "But we've got a right
to turn our badges over for this day, because we performed a Good
Samaritan act."

"Go on and tell us about it!" urged Sandy Griggs.

"We heard groans, and weak calls for help," said Tom, unable to keep
back his news any longer, though he would have liked very much to
continue tantalizing the others, "and after we had kicked off our
skates and hung our packs in a tree, we went over into the woods and
found----"

"What?" roared several of the curious scouts in unison.

"Who but our fellow townsman, Sim Jeffreys, whining and groaning to
beat the band," continued the narrator. "It seems that he had got
caught in a trap, and expected to be frozen to death to-night, or
starve there to-morrow."

"A trap, did ye say?" asked Tolly Tip. And Paul noticed a sudden look
of enlightenment come into his face.

"Tell us what sort of a trap, Tom?" urged Bobolink.

"A regular bear trap!" replied the one addressed.

"Oh, come now! you're trying to play some sort of trick on us,
fellows," cried Spider Sexton. "How ever would a real bear trap come
there?"

"Ask Tolly Tip,