“It’ll be good to know I’m missed,” Amesbury laughed. Then more soberly: “I tell you it’s good to have you chaps here. I’ll look forward every day I’m gone to getting back. When I’m alone I never care much whether I’m here or somewhere else. But now I’ve the pleasant anticipation before me of coming home to a jolly good day or two each week with you fellows. Your coming here means a lot to me.” “You’re mighty good to say so. It was so splendid of you to bring us from the post!” declared Paul. “You’ve got to earn your way, you know, and if you work hard you’ll earn a little money besides.” With the first hint of gray dawn Amesbury and Ahmik donned their snowshoes, said adieu, and, each hauling his flat-sled, were quickly swallowed by the black shadows of the forest. It was a marvelously beautiful day. The rising sun set the frost-clad trees and snow sparkling and scintillating, the atmosphere was clear and transparent, and it was altogether too entrancing out of doors for the lads to forego an excursion. They had become well inured to the severe cold, growing more intense with the lengthening January days, and shrank from it not at all. “Let’s begin our trapping today,” Paul suggested. “It’s just too great to stick inside.” “Now I were thinkin’ that,” said Dan. “We might be settin’ some traps, an’ get our trails begun.” “All right; that’s bully!” Paul exclaimed enthusiastically. “I never did any trapping, and I’d like to learn how.” They selected a dozen traps each, and cut some bits of venison to bait them with. Dan carried one of Amesbury’s axes and Paul’s shotgun, explaining: “We might be seein’ some birds, now,” but Paul, with his own light axe and his share of traps, decided his rifle would be too heavy to carry. Half a mile from the cabin, in a creek valley, Dan stopped, and pointing to tracks in the snow, explained: “Them’s marten tracks, an’ I’m thinkin’ we’ll set a trap here.” He accordingly selected a spruce tree about four inches in diameter, cut it off four feet above the snow, and in the top of the stump made a V-shaped notch. He then trimmed all the branches, except the brush at the top, from the tree, and with the brush end lying in the snow, laid the butt end firmly in the notch cut in the top of the stump, with the butt projecting, probably, four feet beyond the stump. With his axe he now split the butt of the tree, and prying it open inserted a piece of the venison they had brought for bait. Just back of the bait, and on top of the tree trunk, he fastened and set a trap. “There,” remarked Dan, “I finds that a rare easy way t’ set marten traps, an’ a good un, too. Th’ marten walks up th’ tree t’ get th’ bait, an’ right in th’ trap.” “I can do that all right,” said Paul. “Oh, yes, you can do un. ’Tis easy, now you knows how. I’m thinkin’ you might be workin’ up this brook, an’ set th’ traps you has, an’ I cuts over t’ th’ west’ard an’ finds another place t’ set mine.”