In such a mood the four boys, drinking in the odor of the pine-trees as a fillip to delight, were presently exploring the loggers' shanty, with its rude bunks, oilcloth-covered table, here an old magazine, there a worn-out stocking, relics of human habitation. "Nobody occupies this camp during the summer," said Leon. "I think Toiney Leduc and another man worked up here last winter." "I'm pretty sure that Toiney did! Look there!" The scout was unfolding a piece of charred paper pinioned in a corner by a tomato can; it was a printed fragment of a French-Canadian _voyageur_ song, at sight of which the boys made the shanty ring with:-- "Rond! rond! rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!" "But I'm not so sure that nobody is using the shanty now," remarked Nixon presently. "See that tobacco ash and the stains on the white oilcloth!" pointing to the dingy table. "Both look fresh; the ash couldn't possibly have remained here since last winter; 'twould have been blown away long ago by the wind sweeping through the open shanty. There's some more of it on the mattress in this bunk," drawing himself up to look over the side of the rude crib built into the wall. "I guess somebody _does_ occupy the camp now--at night anyway!" "Oh! so you set up to be a sort of Sherlock Holmes, do you?" jeered Leon. "I don't set up to be anything! But I can tell that the men ground their axes right here." The scout was now kicking over a small wooden trough that had reposed, bottom uppermost, amid the long grass before the shanty. "How can you make that out?" It was Colin who spoke. "Because, look! there's rust on the inside of the trough, showing that there are steely particles mixed with the dust of the interior and that water has dripped into it from the revolving grindstone." "Pshaw! anybody could find that out who set to work to think about it," came in a chorus from his three companions. But that "thinking" was just the point: the others would have passed by that topsy-turvy wooden vessel, which might have been used for sundry purposes, with its dusty interior exactly the hue of the yellow sawdust, without stopping to reason out the story of the patient axe-grinding which had gone on there during winter's bitter days. "But, I say, what good does it do you to find out things like that?" questioned Starrie Chase, kicking over the trough, his shrewd young face a star of speculation. "If one should go about poking his nose into everything that had happened, why! he'd find stories in most things, I guess! The woods would be full of them."