woodsmen did not dream of--at a log camp far in the wilderness. Thence
they could proceed to solitudes where the voice of man seldom echoed,
where the foot of man rarely trod, and where moose signs were pretty
sure to be found.

But there was one very unusual feature in his present expedition. The
student of nature, who generally started forth alone, was this year,
owing to a freak of fate and to his natural good-nature, accompanied by
two English lads.

Early in the summer of this same year, Francis Farrar, a wealthy
cotton-merchant of Manchester, England, visited America on a
business-trip, and became the guest of Cyrus's father. He brought with
him his two sons, Neal, aged sixteen and a half, and Adolphus,
familiarly called Dol, who was more than a year younger.

Both boys had been at a large public school, and physically, as well as
mentally, were well developed. They were accustomed to spending long
vacations with their father at wild spots on the seashore, or amid
mountains in England and Scotland. They could tirelessly do a sixty-mile
spin on their "wheels," were good football players, excellent rowers,
formed part of the crew of their father's yacht, could skilfully handle
gun and fishing-rod, but they had never camped out.

They knew none of the delights of sleeping in woodland quarters, with
only a canvas or bark roof, or perhaps a few spruce boughs, between them
and the sky--

"While a music wild and solemn
From the pine-tree's height