potatoes to roast. Then we will make a bed of hemlock boughs, build
a fire near it and roll up in our blankets."

"Well, you may go, and I will help out your commissariat with a
loaf of bread and a chicken. But be sure you have plenty of fuel
ready before dark. It will be a cold night and you will have to
replenish your fire three or four times before morning."

"Thank you, Doctor. You don't know how much obliged we are to you
for your kindness."

"And you don't know how much trouble I am in for, when the rest of
the boys hear of this escapade of yours."

But after the study door closed the doctor smiled quietly to himself
and said under his breath:

"Just like myself at their age--have the woods instinct."

Ned and Dick slept little that night. There was about a foot of snow
on the ground and they scraped bare a place for their camp-fire
beside a big stump and gathered enough fuel from windfalls for the
night. Then they rolled a log beside the fire for a seat and built a
soft bed with fragrant branches of hemlock and spruce. They roasted
the chicken over a thick bed of glowing coals and baked potatoes in
the ashes of the fire. The chicken was carved with their pocket
knives and they got along without forks or plates. By using bark
gathered from a birch and softening it over their fire they made
cups with which they brought water from a nearby brook. When supper
was finished the boys rolled up in their blankets and lying on the