CHAPTER VIII.

ANOTHER CAMP.


"Hello! Come to supper, boys! Come to supper right away!"

Half eagerly, half shrinkingly, Dol emerged from the woods, feeling a
very torment of hunger quickened in him by the tantalizing sound of that
oft-repeated invitation.

A sight met him which, because of what went before and all that came
after, will be forever chief among the forest pictures which rise in
exciting panorama before his memory, when camping is a thing of the
past.

A broad dash of evening light, the sun's afterglow, fell upon a patch of
clearing bordered by clumps of slim, outstanding pines, the scouts of
their massive brethren. That this was used as a camping-ground the
first glance revealed. A camp which looked to the tired eyes of the lost
boy a real "home-camp," though it consisted of rude log cabins, occupied
it. A couple of birch-bark canoes reposed amid a network of projecting
roots. Withered stumps and tree-tops littered the ground.

In the foreground of the picture stood a man with a horn in his uplifted
hand, which he had just taken from his mouth. He was minus a coat; and
the rough-and-tumble disarray of his attire showed that he had been
lounging by his camp-fire, or perhaps overseeing the preparation of
supper. Dol had a vague impression that the individual was not a