He proved that he was right, and indeed it was really a difficult thing, after Obed had placed the noose just as he wanted it, close to the ground, and on little wooden crotches he had arranged there for the purpose, for any one to step across without getting his foot entangled in the rope.

“Well, let’s reckon, then, he does get caught in the noose, and jerks it tight around his ankle,” continued Obed, very much interested himself in what he was saying, and as Max quickly noticed, even neglecting to speak as he usually did, although he had shown this odd trait before.  “What happens?  I’ll show you how it’s going to work out, if everything runs as I’ve planned.”

Accordingly, he picked up a heavy piece of wood that chanced to be lying close by, and which doubtless Obed had used before in order to test the accuracy of his figuring.  This he inserted in the noose, and then gave it a hunch that not only tightened the rope but carried out the further purpose of the inventor.

Instantly things began to happen.  The boys heard a queer rattling sound near by, and immediately the wooden “dummy” was jerked out of Obed’s hands, to be drawn up until it struck against the limb of the tree fully ten feet above.  Steve gave a whoop.

“My stars! but that worked like a charm, Obed, let me tell you.  Greased lightning could hardly be quicker than the way you’ve arranged your trap.  And what was all that rattling sound about?  What’s holding on to the other end of the rope, which pulled the log up on the run?  I want to know, even if I ain’t from Missouri.”

The woods boy laughed as though quite pleased because his trap had worked well enough to call forth such words of praise from these new friends.

“Come over and see,” he simply said.

They followed the line of rope, now taut, and resembling a huge “fiddle string,” as Bandy-legs remarked, testing it as he passed along.  It led them to the brow of an abrupt little descent, a sheer drop of perhaps twenty feet.  Down this slope they followed the rope with their eyes and then discovered it was attached to a large and heavy barrel that could almost be called a hogshead, evidently something which had been used as a crate to convey a portion of the previous owner of the cabin’s crockery ware thither when he moved up from town.

As the boys were no simpletons, they readily grasped the essential qualities of Obed’s little scheme.  It may have been original with him; and then again possibly he had borrowed the same from some book he had read; but, nevertheless, it struck them as pretty clever.

Not content with the heaviness of the big barrel, he had placed a number of stones inside so as to add to the swiftness of its flight down that declivity, once it was released.  The rope acted as “starter,” and upon being jerked, as must be the case, should any one get a foot caught in the noose, it released a stake that kept the heavy barrel poised there at the top of the descent.  The consequence was that it would plunge downward almost as though making a sheer drop; the noose tightening about the leg or legs of the unhappy wight who had sprung the trap, he would be jerked off his feet and hauled up, head downward, to dangle there in midair, as helpless as a babe.