"But, Max, who is he?" asked Steve; at which the other shrugged his
shoulders.

"Ask me something easy, boys," he replied. "I've never seen him even
once, like Herb and his chums did, when they tried to sleep in that
queer old cabin. But you see, we've got his footprints right here in the
dirt. They ought to tell us something, perhaps."

"But, Max, footprints can't talk, can they?" demanded Bandy-legs,

"Always, in their own language," was the ready reply. "You have to study
that a while though, before you can understand what they say."

"Oh, yes, I'm on to you now, Max," cried the other, triumphantly; "you
mean that you can tell it was a man by the size of the prints; ain't
that it?"

"One of many things," answered Max. "Now, this seems to have been a
pretty hefty sort of fellow, because the marks are big. It is a common
shoe, too, just like the men make and wear in the prisons and public
institutions."

Bandy-legs fairly gasped for breath at hearing this remark. To his mind
it seemed to imply that the mysterious dweller of the strange cabin on
Catamount Island must be an escaped convict, a desperate ruffian, who
might take a notion to murder them all in their sleep.

"And we've still got five more nights to stay here!" he groaned, as
though with that new intelligence the very last hope he was cherishing