"Just so; but it might have been worse. Two hickory-fed squirrels and a plump 'possum make a fair bag after such a hard winter." "Not so very much where there are five mouths to fill. Oh! Bob, if only we _could_ get the deer that made these tracks! I'm tired of jerked venison." (Note 1.)[A] Robert Armstrong, sixteen years of age, looked down upon the ground where the trail of the deer was well defined, and evidently he, too, felt some of the eagerness that possessed his more impulsive brother. It was the days previous to the Revolution. Around the two youths stretched the great primeval Virginia wilderness, sparsely settled, and hedged in by the chain of Alleghany Mountains, beyond which only a few venturesome spirits had ever dared journey; and some of these bold pioneers had never come back to tell the tale of their discoveries and exploits. The two boys had started from their cabin home, just outside a small Virginia town, determined to secure fresh food for the family, at that time facing unusual privation. Alexander, or Sandy, as he was always called, the impetuous one, seldom looked any distance ahead, so that it was Robert who many times found himself compelled to pull his younger brother out of serious difficulties. Still, both lads, having been born and reared on the Virginia frontier, were really older through experience than their years would indicate. In those strenuous days of pioneering, boys had to learn how to take care of themselves very soon after they began to walk. Their daily life brought them in touch with the perils of the wilderness. They were taught how to handle a gun at five years of age, and the tracks made by all wild animals soon became as plain to them as the pages of a printed book to a scholar. Sandy, seeing his more cautious brother hesitate, renewed his pleading. "We need this deer very much, Bob," he went on, eagerly. "Since father lost his place with old Jason Diggett, things have gone hard with us at home. Mother tries to smile and cheer us up, but every door has been shut against poor father since that tobacco barn burned down, and he was accused of setting fire to it." "Yes," said the other, a frown crossing his young face as though painful memories had been stirred up by his brother's words, "but they were not able to prove anything against father, and we know that he could never have done such a thing." "But the deer," continued Sandy, persistently; "why not try for it? Perhaps it may be feeding close by, in some glade where the trees have sheltered the grass, or where there are tender twigs to be nipped off. Say yes, Bob, and let us start right away." The older boy cast a quick look upward, and his gaze rested longest in the quarter where the forest wall was broken, allowing a view of the gray sky. "The air is raw, and I'm sure a storm is coming, late though the season is," he remarked, slowly.