ound. There's a heap of information in a track, Rube,
altogether independent of plain footprints."

Rube rested his chin in his hands, listening.

"Suppose a bicycle or an automobile car had gone along a dusty or a
muddy trail," continued Kiddie, "and you wanted to know which way it
was travelling, what 'ld you do ter discover? You'd look at the rut
the wheel had made. You'd see that the loose dust or the wet mud
feathered out from it in the direction in which the wheel was going.
No need ter search for footprints. It's the same with drops of blood
from a wound, drops of water splashed from a jug or a bucket--any
drippin' liquid; the drops splash forward in the direction in which the
person splashing them was movin', the splashes being longer or shorter
according to the person's pace. If you aim at being a capable scout--a
good tracker--don't study the obvious things alone: look as well at the
smaller signs, which often tell you more. And wherever you are,
whatever you're doing, keep your senses busy--your sight, your hearing,
your senses of smell and touch. At the present moment my senses tell
me there's a mosquito in this yer veranda: I c'n hear the critter
humming away back of me. I know that we're goin' to have bacon and
eggs for dinner; I c'n smell them bein' fried. The kitchen's some
warm; your mother has opened the window; I c'n feel the draught from
it."

In the days of Kiddie's convalescence, Rube learnt many a lesson in
scoutcraft; lessons which he hastened to put into practice. It was
afterwards, however, when Kiddie was well, and they could go camping
out together in the wilds, that he learnt most. In the meantime, there
was the work of building the woodland cabin to attend to.

He had at first intended that the cabin should be constructed by his
own hands alone, of rough, unhewn timber; that it should contain only
one room, and that of the simplest. It was to be merely a trapper's
log hut in the forest, and he was to live as a simple trapper, quite
alone, forgetting that he was a wealthy English nobleman.

But gradually his ideals had developed, and he had decided to make the
place comfortable and convenient as well as simple and solitary--to
make it, as it were, his headquarters, where he could store his
trophies of the chase and keep his guns and books and pictures.

If he wished to go away on hunting trips, he could leave the cabin in
safety, and take his pony and his tent and knapsack