We enter the room on the afternoon of the same day on which Dan Evans came over to ask for five of the ten dollars that Don had promised David for field-breaking his young pointer. We have seen that he got the money, and that he went away leaving Bert reading a book. We find him engaged in the same pleasing occupation. He reads for a few minutes, and then placing the book on his knee, gazes thoughtfully out at the trees in the yard. “I don’t see why it can’t be done,” he says, to himself. “Father has a light spring wagon that I know he would let us take, and we have two good ponies to draw it. We couldn’t put up at a hotel while we are gone, but who cares for that? We own a good tent, and if we should take old Cuff along to act as cook and camp-keeper, we could live as well as we do at home or at the shooting-box.” The book Bert has been reading, and which suggests this train of thought, is Frank Forester’s “Deer Stalkers.” It tells how Harry Archer and two companions went on a deer hunt somewhere in the state of New York, and how they enjoyed themselves. It is one of Don’s favorite books; and the reason Bert reads it to-day is because it happened to be the first one he picked up when he came into the room. While he read the thought occurred to him that if he and his brother should follow in the lead of the heroes of the book, they could spend a few days very pleasantly. They had everything needful for a week’s sojourn in the woods, or a month’s, and a trip like that would just suit Don. Their school term would be over in a week--their tutor was going north to spend the holidays with his friends--and Don, who had grown very fond of him and of his books, wondered how he was going to pass the time during his absence. Of course there was the shooting-box, but one does not care to spend two whole months in duck hunting, and Don had often been heard to declare that he wished he could go somewhere and spend a week as he had never spent one before. Bert thought he had hit upon something that would please him. He had heard wonderful reports of late of the abundance of game to be found in an adjoining county, forty miles away. Deer were so plenty that they had been seen in the corn-fields; a bear had been known to approach a lonely farm house in broad daylight and walk off with a pig; and one day a hunter, who was roaming the woods with his pack of hounds, encountered some animal in a dense cane-brake which almost annihilated his dogs, and made off before the hunter could shoot him. The man did not know what sort of an animal it was, for the cane was so thick that he could not see him; but there was only one thing in that part of the country that could whip out a pack of hounds so easily and completely, and that was a panther. Bert did not like the idea of encountering such game as this, but Don would not have hesitated a minute. Besides being famous as a wing shot, and being very fond of the breech-loader which created such havoc among