I had been so busy during the two weeks I was in camp that I had forgotten the day of the week; neither did I take time to kill a deer or to go up to the road to see if anyone had written, to see if I was dead or alive. There was a stage passed over the road twice a week. I had nailed a box with a good tight lid on a tree by the road so that I could send a line out home for anything I wanted or my family could write to me. I had two or three traps set for foxes up towards the road along the edge of a laurel patch where there were plenty of rabbits and the foxes worked around to catch rabbits. I thought I would go to the road and be there about the time the stage passed along and see if I could hear anything from pard and the folks at home and then I could tend the traps on my way back to camp. [Illustration: WOODCOCK AND SOME OF HIS CATCH.] I was at the road shortly before the stage came along and was surprised as well as delighted to see a neighbor boy by the name of Frank Curtis aboard the stage as he had said he would come over and stay a day or two with me in camp. Frank had not been allowed to spend much time with a gun or traps, but like most boys, he liked a gun. My mother died before I was eleven years old and father allowed me to trap and hunt about as I liked. When we got down near the traps we set our packs down--I say we, for my folks had sent me a new supply of provisions--and went to look after the traps. The first one had a rabbit leg in it and it was plain to be seen that some animal had eaten the rabbit. We reset the trap and went on to the next trap which was set in a little gorge or hollow. A few yards below the trap two large trees had blown down across the little hollow. The tree on the side farthest down the hill from the trap had broken in two where it fell over the hollow and dropped down so that it laid close to the ground while the tree on the upper side, the side nearest the trap, lay a foot from the ground in the hollow. The trees were two or three feet apart right at the hollow but were close together on one side. When we came to where the trap had been set we found trap and drag gone and nothing in sight. We soon discovered the animal which we supposed was a coon, had gone down the ravine toward the two large trees that had fallen across the hollow. We went to the logs and looked between them. There we could see the clog but the animal was crowded back under the logs so we could see but little of it.