Uncle Eb had baked bread for his guests after a fashion of his own on the camp frying-pan, setting the pan on some glowing coals a foot or so from the fire; he had fried unlimited flapjacks, and had cheerfully placed what stores he had at their disposal.  His three luxuries were novelties to the English lads, being pork, maple sugar,—­drawn from the beautiful maple-trees near his camp,—­and a small wooden keg of sticky, dark molasses.  The sugar was the only one which Dol found palatable; and he knew that the Bostonian, Cyrus, shared his feeling.  To tell the truth, the juvenile Adolphus was not fastidious, but he was suddenly seized with an ambitious desire to vary the diet of the camp.

“Uncle Eb said that I could use this ‘ole fuzzee,’ as he called it, whenever I liked,” he muttered, looking wistfully at the shot-gun; “and I’ve a big mind to give those lazy fellows in there a surprise.  They spent the night out jacking, and didn’t get any meat because Cyrus let Neal do the shooting, and he bungled it.  It’s my turn next to go after deer, but I’m not going to wait for that.”

Here his steel-gray eyes fell on the moccasins which he had not yet put on, and struck fire instantly.  His ambition was doubled.  For if there is one thing more than another which in the forest will stir the pluck of a novice, and make him feel like an old woodsman, it is the sight of his Indian footwear.  Dol put his on, admired their light, comfortable feeling, their soft buckskin, and rashly decided that he could dispense with the loose inner soles which Cyrus had fitted into them to protect his feet.

Then, being very much of a stranger to American woods, he communed with himself after this fashion,—­

“Cyrus says that different tribes of Indians wear differently made moccasins, and one redskin, if he sees the tracks of another in soft mud or snow, can tell what tribe he belongs to by his footmarks.  That’s funny!  I suppose if any old brave was knocking about and saw my tracks in a boggy spot, he’d think it was a Kickapoo who had passed that way—­not Dol Farrar of Manchester, England.  These are of the shape worn by the Kickapoo tribe—­so Cy says.

“I’m the kid of the camp, I know,” he went on, with another flash in his eyes, as if there was a bit of flint somewhere in his make-up which had struck their steel.  “But I’ll be bound I can do as well or better than the others can.  I’m off now to Squaw Pond.  I think I can follow the trail easily enough.  Uncle Eb showed me yesterday where he had spotted some of the trees all the way along to the water.  And if I don’t shoot a couple of black ducks for dinner or supper, I’m a duffer, and not fit for camping.”

He took down the powder-horn and slung it round him, saw that there was plenty of meat in the ragged coon-skin ammunition pouch which hung beside it, fastened that to his belt, slipped on his coat, and started off, with the “ole fuzzee” on his shoulder.