the owners, and with his wife and baby here, started to clear the timber
off. So you see 'twas him that put up the queer little old cabin here.
He thought he could have a great home of it in time."

"Yes, I saw a number of big trees that must have been felled with the ax
years ago," Max remarked at this point; "and I was wondering about it."

"W-w-what happened to W-w-wesley C-c-combs?" asked Toby.

"It was a mighty sad thing, my dad said," Steve went on, a tremor in his
own voice, for Steve was tender-hearted after his fashion; "you see, the
first winter he was here he made quite a heap of money trappin' furs,
and fishing through the ice for pickerel that he sold in town. Then in
the spring the floods came and the whole little family was wiped out;
though the cabin, bein' built so strong, held out against the freshet,
and it has ever since, too."

"All drowned, Wesley Coombs, his wife, and his baby, too; that's a tough
story of the old island you're giving us, Steve," remarked Owen.

"Well, they said as how the man was saved, but he was stark starin' mad;
and my dad said he died later on. I never could get that story out of my
bead for a long time. It gave me a bad feeling this afternoon when I
remembered the same, and I thought of that little cabin once being a
happy home."

"Gee! I hope one of them same floods don't take a notion to swoop down
this way while we're camped on Catamount Island!" declared Bandy-legs.

"Oh, well, we'd get home in a hurry if it did," remarked Steve,