“Yes, they did it for that, and I guess they took ’em down so that folks could miss their way, too. Those tramps are not above waylaying folks and making them give up all they’ve got in their pockets.” “I believe you there. But since Sheriff Clowes rounded up about a dozen of ’em last month they have kept themselves scarce. Phew! How the wind blows!” “Yes, and how the snow is coming down! If we are not careful, we’ll not get home at all. I hadn’t any idea it was going to snow when we left home.” “I’m afraid if we don’t get home by dark mother will worry about us.” “Oh, she knows we are old enough to take care of ourselves. If it snows too hard we can seek shelter at the next farmhouse we come to and wait until it clears off.” The two Westmore boys, of whom Joe was the older by a year and a day, had left their home at Lakeport early that morning for a long tramp into the country after some late fall nuts which a friend had told them were plentiful at a locality known as Glasby’s Hill. They knew the Hill was a long way off, but had not expected such a journey to get to it. The bridge was down over one of the country streams and this had necessitated a walk of over a mile to another bridge, and here the road was not near as good as that on which they had been traveling. Then, after the nuts were found and two fair-sized bags gathered, it had begun to snow and blow, until now the wind was sailing by them at a great rate and the snow was coming down so fast that it threatened to obliterate the landscape around them. The Westmore family were six in number, Mr. Horace Westmore and his wife, the boys just introduced, and two younger children named Laura and Bessie. Mr. Westmore was a flour and feed dealer, and had the principal establishment of that kind in Lakeport, at the lower end of Pine Lake. While the merchant was not rich, he was fairly well-to-do, and the family moved in the best society that the lake district afforded. On Mrs. Westmore’s side there had once been much wealth, but an unexpected turn of fortune had left her father almost penniless at his death. There was a rumor that the dead man had left to his daughter the rights to a valuable tract of land located at the head of the lake, but though Mr. Westmore tried his best he could not establish any such claim. The land was there, held by a miserly real estate dealer of Brookside named Hiram Skeetles; but Skeetles declared that the property was his own, free and clear, and that Mrs. Westmore’s father had never had any right to it whatsoever. “What’s mine is mine, and don’t ye go for to forgit it!” Hiram Skeetles had snarled, during his last interview with Horace Westmore on the subject. “Ye ain’t got nary a slip o’ paper to show it ever belonged to Henry Anderson. I don’t want ye to bother me no more. If ye do, I’ll have the law on ye!” And Mr. Westmore had come away feeling that the case was decidedly a hopeless one.