problem. Apparently, if the stranger in camp was trying to mystify them,
he had already succeeded in tangling up the wits of Bandy-legs completely.

Max continued to sit there and take it all in. There was no need of his
saying anything so long as the other fellows had embarked on the task of
drawing Obed out and learning just what he was doing to keep him
marooned up there summer and winter, like a regular old recluse, or
woodchuck.

"But there must be heaps and heaps of snow here winters," suggested
Steve; "and I'd think you'd find it pretty hard getting about."

"Oh! not so bad when you have snow-shoes" Obed told him, with a shrug of
his shoulders, and another attack on the contents of his tin panninkin.

"'Course not," Steve hastened to say, as though he had guessed that this
would be the answer. "But when the law is on the deer and partridges it
must be hard to keep to a regular diet of trout. I c'n stand them for a
while; but in the end I'd get sick of the smell of 'em cooking."

"Oh! I have plenty of good grub along," chuckled Obed. "I was on my way
home at the time I glimpsed your fire; and bein' full o' wonder
concernin' who could be around these diggings right now I crept up to
spy on ye. But say, soon's I glimpsed your crowd, and saw that you was
only a bunch o' boys, why I felt easier, 'cause I knew then you couldn't
mean to bother me any."

Now that sounded queer again, Bandy-legs thought. Why should any one
take the trouble to "bother" Obed Grimes, unless, indeed, he had been
doing something that he hadn't ought to, and hence expected to be