“You’ll find a canoe hidden in the bushes near a big clump of trees on the east shore,” he said.  “That is, if nobody has swiped it.  But I covered it up pretty well the last time I was there, and I guess it’s safe enough.  If not, you’ll have to take your chance in fishing from the shore.  There’s an island a little way out in the lake, and you’ll find the pike thick around there if you can get out to it.  And don’t wait too long before starting for home.  That mountain trail is hard enough to follow in the daytime, but you’d find your work cut out for you if you tried it in the dark.”

They promised not to forget the time in their enthusiasm for the sport, and, stowing away in their basket the toothsome and abundant lunch put up by Mrs. Melton, they started off gaily on their trip.

For a little distance from the house the road was fairly level.  Then it began to ascend and soon the trees that clothed the slopes shut them in, and they lost sight of the ranch and of everything that spoke of civilization.

“‘This is the forest primeval,’” quoted Dick.

“‘The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,’” added Tom.

“Primeval’s the word,” said Bert as he looked in awe at the giant trees, towering in some instances to a height of two hundred feet.  “I suppose this looked just as it does now ten thousand years ago.  The only thing that suggests man is this trail we’re following, and that gets fainter and fainter as we keep climbing.  This is sure enough ’God’s out-of-doors.’”

The balsam of the pines was in their nostrils and the path was carpeted by the fragrant needles.  Squirrels chattered in the trees and chipmunks slipped like shadows between the trunks.  As they were passing a monster oak, Bert’s observant eye noted something that brought him to a sudden halt.

“Look there, fellows,” and he pointed to a place on the bark about fifteen feet from the ground.

“Well, what about it?” demanded Tom.

“Those scratches on the trunk,” said Bert.  “What made them?”

They looked more closely and saw two rows of scratches that had torn deeply into the bark.  Each row consisted of five marks at an equal distance apart.  It was as though two gigantic rakes had been drawn along the rough surface, each tooth of the rakes peeling off a long vertical strip.

The boys looked at each other in wonder.  Then they peered into the surrounding woods a little uneasily.

“Some animal made those marks,” said Bert at last.  “And, what’s more, there’s only one animal that could have done it.”

“And that’s a grizzly bear,” said Dick.

Again the boys looked at each other, and it almost seemed as though they could hear the beating of their hearts.  Then Tom measured again with his eye the distance from the ground to where the scratches began.

“Sixteen feet if it’s an inch,” he decided.  “Nonsense,” he went on, with a tone of relief in his voice.  “There’s nothing that walks on four feet could do it.  A horse even couldn’t stand on his hind legs and strike with his fore hoofs the place where those scratches begin.  Some of those pre-historic monsters, whose skeletons we see in the museums, might have done it, but nothing that walks the earth nowadays.  You’ll have to guess again, Bert.”