The Clown swung his double-bitted axe into a dry hemlock, the keen blade sinking deeper and deeper into the tree with each successive stroke, made with the precision and rapidity of a piston, until the tree fell with a sweeping crash (it had been as smoothly severed as if by a saw) and the two soon had its full length cut up and piled near the shanty for night wood.

It was not much of a shelter.  Its timbered door had sagged from its hinges, its paneless square windows afforded but poor protection from wind and rain, while a cook stove, not worth the carrying away, supported itself upon two legs in one corner of the rotting interior.

Stout hands and willing hearts, however, did their work, and by the next sundown a new roof had been put on the shanty, “The Pride of the Home” wired more securely upon its two rusty legs and the long bunk flanking one side of the shanty neatly thatched with a deep bed of springy balsam.  Thus had the tumble-down log-house been transformed into a tight and comfortable camp.

* * * * *

The next morning (the rain over) dawned as bright as a diamond, its light flashing on the brook below, across which darted the kingfisher, a streak of azure through the green of the pines—­while in a clump of near-by firs two red squirrels played hide-and-seek among the branches.

At the first sunbeam the Clown stretched his great arms above his head, whistled a lively jig tune, reached for a fry pan, and soon had a mess of pork hissing over the fire.  Later on, from a bent sapling a smoke-begrimed coffee pail bubbled, boiled over, and was lifted off to settle.

“A grand morning ain’t it, Hite?” he shouted in high glee, rubbing his eyes as he squatted before the blaze.  “Yes, sir—­a grand mornin’.  Them deer won’t hev’ time to stop and make up their beds arter the old dog gits to work on ’em to-day.  I’m tellin’ ye, Hite, we’ll hev’ ven’son ’fore night if Mr. Thayor and Billy takes a mind to go huntin’.”

“Mebbe,” replied the trapper guardedly, “and mebbe we won’t.  There ain’t no caountin’ on luck, specially deer.  But it’s jest as well to be ready”—­and he squeezed another cartridge into the magazine of his Winchester and laid the rifle tenderly on its side in a dry place as if fearful of disturbing its fresh coat of oil.

Suddenly the old dog, who had been watching the frizzling bacon, lifted his ears and peered down in the basin of the hemlocks.

“Halloo!” came faintly from below where the timber was thickest.

The Clown sprang to his feet.

“Thar they be, Hite!” he said briskly.  “By whimey—­thar they be!”

The trapper strode out into the tangled clearing and after a resonant whoop in reply stood listening and smiling.

“Jest like Billy Holcomb,” he remarked.  “He’s took ‘bout as mean goin’ as a feller could find to git here.”  Then he added, “But you never could lose him.”