"Great O!" whooped Colin, breaking in. "That's what I've been planning on doing too. I want to go _far_ into the woods to-day,"--his hands doubled and opened excitedly, as if grasping at something hitherto out of reach,--"farther than I've ever been before,--far enough to see Varney's Paintpot and the old Bear's Den--and some of the other wonders that the men tell about!" "But there aren't any bears in these Massachusetts woods now?" It was the strange boy, Nixon Warren, who eagerly spoke. "Not that we know of!" Coombsie answered. "If one should stray over the border from New Hampshire he manages to lie low. Apparently there's nothing bigger than a deer traveling in our woods to-day--together with foxes in plenty and an occasional coon. The last bear seen in this region, Nix, had his den in the cave of a great rock in the thickest part o' the woods. He was such an everlasting nuisance, killing calves and lambs, that a hunter tracked him into the cave and killed him with his knife. Ever since it has been called the Bear's Den. I've never seen it; nor you, Col!" "No, but Starrie Chase has! I was going to hunt him up too, and Kenjo Red: they're a team if you want to go into the woods; they know more about them than any other boy in Exmouth." "Kenjo has gone to Salem to-day. And Leon Chase?" Coombsie's expression was doubtful. "I guess Leon makes a bluff of knowing the woods better than he does. He'll scare everything away with his dog and shotgun. Captain Andy is hunting for him now," with another backward glance to where the massive figure of the old sea-captain was melting from view. "He's threatening to shake Starrie until his heels change places with his head for fixing the Doctor's doorbell last night, wedging a pin into it so that it kept on ringing until the electricity gave out--and for teasing old Ma'am Baldwin again." "'Mom Baldwin,' who lives in that old baldfaced house 'way over on the salt-marshes!" Colin hooted. "Pshaw! she ought to wash her clothes at the Witch Rock, where Dark Tammy was made to wash hers, over a hundred years ago. I guess Leon knows the way to Varney's Paintpot anyhow," he advanced clinchingly. "What sort of queer Paintpot is that?" Nixon Warren spoke; his stranger's part in the conversation was limited to putting excited questions. "It's a red-ochre swamp--a bed of moist red clay--that's hidden somewhere in the woods," Colin explained. "The Indians used it for making paint. So did the farmers, hereabouts, until a few years ago. I believe it's mostly dried up now." "Whoopee! if we could only find it, we might paint ourselves to our waists, make believe we were Indians and go yelling through the woods!" Nixon's eye sparkled like sun-touched granite, and Colin parted with the last lingering suspicion of his being a flowerpot fellow.