After Thomas’s departure Doctor Joe and the boys tidied and snugged things up for the winter, and many a fine hunt they had, mornings and evenings, in the edge of a near-by marsh through which a brook coursed to join the sea.  Hunting geese and ducks was indeed a duty, for they must needs depend upon the hunt for no small share of their living.  It was a duty they enjoyed, however.  Skill and a steady hand and a quick eye are necessary to success, and they never failed to return with a full bag.

The weather was now cold enough to keep the birds sweet and fresh, and before September closed a full two score of fine fat geese were hanging in the enclosed lean-to shed with a promise of many good dinners in the future.

Between the hunting and the work about home there was no time to be dawdled vainly away.  When there was nothing more pressing the wood-pile always stood suggestively near the door inviting attention, and it was necessary to saw and split a vast deal of wood to keep the big box stove supplied, for it had a great maw and would develop a marvellous appetite when the weather grew cold.

No extended travelling was possible for Doctor Joe on his errands of mercy until the sea should freeze and dogs and sledge could be called into service.  But during the fine September weather he and the boys made two short trips up the Bay, where there was ailing in some of the families.

In the course of these excursions they took occasion to visit Let-in-Cove, which lay just outside Grampus River, where the new lumber camps were situated, and also Snug Cove and Tuggle Bight, a little farther on.  At Let-in-Cove Peter and Lige Sparks, at Snug Cove Obadiah Button and Micah Dunk, and at Tuggle Bight Seth Muggs were enlisted in the scout troop, and a handbook left at each place.  These, indeed, with the three Anguses, were the only boys of scout age within a radius of fifty miles of The Jug.

There was great excitement among the lads, and Doctor Joe proudly declared that there would be no finer or more efficient troop of scouts in all the world than his little troop of eight when they had become familiar with their duties.

A new field and a broader vision of life was to open to these Labrador lads, whose life was of necessity circumscribed.  They had never been given the opportunity to play as boys play in more favoured lands.  They had never known the joys of football or cricket or the hundred other fine, health-giving games that are a part of the life of every English or Canadian boy.  They had never seen a circus or a moving picture and they had never been in a schoolroom in their lives.

This opportunity to play and study as other boys play and study in other lands was the thing, perhaps, they longed for above all else.  Doctor Joe had inspired them with ambition.  They hungered to learn and here was the Handbook with many things in it to study, and through Doctor Joe and the book they were to learn the joy of play.