telling her
what they knew; and when they heard her wishing she had a few hogs to
fatten, they could scarcely keep from letting her know their plans. At
last they had to jump up, and run out of the room.

Next day the boys each hunted up a pair of old boots which they had
used the winter before. The leather was so dry and worn that the boots
hurt their growing feet cruelly, but they brought the boots along to
put on when they reached the swamp. This time, each took a gun, and
they also carried an axe, for now they had determined on a plan for
capturing the hogs.

"I wish we had let Peter and Cole come," said Willy, dolefully,
sitting on the butt end of a log they had cut, and wiping his face on
his sleeve.

"Or had asked Uncle Balla to help us," added Frank.

"They'd be certain to tell all about it."

"Yes; so they would."

They settled down in silence, and panted.

"I tell you what we ought to do! Bait the hog-path, as you would for
fish." This was the suggestion of the angler, Frank.

"With what?"

"Acorns."

The acorns were tolerably plentiful around the roots of the big oaks,
so the boys set to work to pick them up. It was an easier job than
cutting the log, and it was not long before each had his hat full.

As they started down to the swamp, Frank exclaimed, suddenly, "Look
there, Willy!"

Willy looked, and not fifty yards away, with their ends resting on old
stumps, were three or four "hacks," or piles of rails, which had been
mauled the season before and left there, probably having been
forgotten or overlooked.

Willy gave a hurrah, while bending under the weight of a large rail.

At the spot where the hog-path came out of the thicket they commenced
to build their trap.

First they laid a floor of rails; then they built a pen, five or six
rails high, which they strengthened with "outriders." When the pen was
finished, they pried up the side nearest the thicket, from the bottom
rail, about a foot; that is, high enough for the animals to enter.
This they did by means of two rails, using one as a fulcrum and one
as a lever, having shortened them enough to enable the work to be done
from inside the pen.

The lever they pulled down at the farther end until it touched the
bottom of the trap, and fastened it by another rail, a thin one, run
at right-angles to the lever, and across the pen. This would slip
easily when pushed away from the gap, and needed to be moved only
about an inch to slip from