musing experiences with some of them, and as the scout
patrol leader never wearied of learning interesting facts at first
hand, Ralph was kept busy talking and answering questions, until
considerable time had slipped by and there was Bud yawning as
though threatening to dislocate his jaws.

"Guess we'd better be thinking of bunking down for the night,"
suggested Hugh. "Did you fetch a blanket along with you, Ralph?"

"Well, I'm too old a hand to be caught napping in the woods without
thinking of the night that is coming," replied the other, laughing
at the same time. "Over in the corner you'll see the bully red
blanket that's hugged me tight on many a cold night when I was
tending my line of traps. I feel that it is like an old friend
when I get it tucked around me, and you'd think I was an Esquimo
lying there, or one of those mummies they get out of Mexican catacombs."

"That's all right," Hugh declared; "I thought you were too sensible
to come up here and spend a night at this time of year without
something to keep you from freezing. Why, even on a summer night
that starts in hot, it's apt to feel chilly along about three in
the morning. I've seen the time when I'd have given a heap to have
my blanket along; and the only thing I could do was to get up and
start the fire booming again."

The three boys started to pick out the best spots for making their
beds, each one being governed by some idea of his own. It was lucky
they did not all think alike, or they must have drawn straws for
first choice.

Hugh was carefully laying his blanket down so that he could crawl
into it as if it were a bag, after he had taken his shoes and some
of his outer clothing off, when he felt a gentle tug at his sleeve.

"Hugh!" said a soft voice in a whisper.

"What is it, Ralph?" questioned the other, going right along with what
he was doing in order not to show that there was anything amiss.

"Don't act as if I was saying anything out of the common, Hugh," said
the other; "but first chance you get, peep out of the tail of your
eye at the broken window, and you'll find that we're being watched!"

CHAPTER IV

READING A "SIGN" BY TORCHLIGHT

Of course it gave the leader of the Wolf patrol a thrill when he
heard this low warning from Ralph. You never would have known it,
though, from any uneasy movement on his part.

He knew that the boy who had spent so much of his time in the woods,
trapping the cunning little fu