We were pretty tired when we returned with our second packs and
dropped them on a low, bare knoll some fifty yards above the fire
where Pete and Stanton were carrying on their culinary operations, but
a whiff of roasting goose came to us like a tonic, and it did not take
us long to get camp pitched.

"Um-m-m," said Easton, stopping in his work of driving tent pegs to
sniff the air now bearing to us appetizing odors of goose and coffee,
"that smells like home."

"You bet it does," assented Richards. "I haven't been filled up for a
week, but I'm going to be to-night."

At length dinner was ready, and we fell to with such good purpose that
the two birds, a generous portion of hot bread, innumerable cups of
black coffee, and finally, a most excellent pudding that Stanton had
made out of bread dough and prunes and boiled in a canvas specimen bag
disappeared.

How we enjoyed it! "No hotel ever served such a banquet," one of the
boys remarked as we filled our pipes and lighted them with brands from
the fire. Then with that blissful feeling that nothing but a good
dinner can give, we lay at full length on the deep white moss, peace-
fully puffing smoke at the stars as they blinked sleepily one by one
out of the blue of the great arch above us until the whole firmament
was glittering with a mass of sparkling heaven gems. The soft perfume
of the forest pervaded the atmosphere; the aurora borealis appeared in
the northern sky, and its waves of changing light swept the heavens;
the vast silence of the wilderness possessed the world and, wrapped in