“’Morning, boys!” he said, as the trio appeared.  “Hope your early rising won’t opset ye!  If you want to dip your faces in the stream, do it quick, for these dodgers are cooked.”

The “dodgers” were the familiar flapjacks.  Herb set down his stick as he spoke to turn a batch of them, which were steaming on the frying-pan, tossing them high in air as he did so, with a dexterous turn of his wrist.

The boys having performed hasty ablutions in the stream, devoted themselves to their breakfast with a hearty will.  There was little leisure for discussing the midnight visit of the lynx, or for anything but the joys of satisfying hunger, and taking in nutrition for the day’s tramp, as Herb was in a hurry to break camp, and start on for Katahdin.  The morning was very calm; there seemed no chance of a wind springing up, so the evening would probably be a choice one for moose-calling.

In half an hour the band was again on the march, the business of breaking camp being a swift one.  The tent was on Herb’s shoulders; and naught was left to mark the visit of man to the humming stream but a bed of withering boughs on which the lynx might sleep to-night, and a few dying embers which the guide had thrashed out with his feet.

No halt was made until four o’clock in the afternoon.  Then Herb Heal came to a standstill on the edge of a wide bog.  It lay between him and what he called the “first heavy growth;” that is, the primeval forest, unthinned by axe of man, which at certain points clothes the foot of Katahdin.

The great mountain, dwelling-place of Pamolah, cradle of the flying Thunder and flashing Lightning, which according to one Indian legend are the swooping sons of the Mountain Spirit, now towered before the travellers, its base only a mile distant.

“I’ve a good mind to make camp right here,” said Herb, surveying the bog and then the firm earth on which he stood.  “We may travel a longish ways farther, and not strike such a fair camping-ground, unless we go on up the side of the mountain to that old home-camp I was telling you about, which we built when we were trapping.  I guess it’s standing yet, and ’twould be a snug shelter; but we’d have a hard pull to reach it this evening.  What d’ye say, boys?”

“I vote for pitching the tent right here,” answered Cyrus.

The English boys were of the same mind, and the guide forthwith unstrapped his heavy pack-basket.  As he hauled forth its contents, and strewed them on the ground, the first article which made its appearance was the moose-horn; it had been carefully stowed in on top.  Dol snatched it up as a dog might snatch a bone, and touched it with longing in every finger-tip.

“There’s one bad thing about this place,” grumbled Herb presently, surveying the landscape wherever his eye could travel, “there isn’t a pint of drinking-water to be seen.  There may be pools here and there in that bog; but, unless we want to keel over before morning, we’d better let ’em alone.  Say! could a couple of you fellows take the camp-kettle, and cruise about a bit in search of a spring?”