until about the end of the present
vacation."

"It would take you at least that length of time to build the shack, I
should think," suggested the lawyer. "Until you had it built you might
have to wrap up in the snow at night for your sleep. And, then, when you
had it all built, you would discover that the shack didn't belong to
you, but to the owner of the land on which you built it. He could order
you away from the shack if he were so disposed."

"I hadn't thought of that," admitted Greg, looking crestfallen.

"I'm afraid we won't camp," spoke up Harry Hazelton.

"The greatest difficulty," suggested the lawyer, "would be getting the
consent of your parents to any such madcap scheme as going off into the
woods to camp, day after day, in mid-winter."

"There might be some difficulty about that, sir," replied Prescott. "But
now it looks as though the one really big problem would be to get a camp
on the money that we now have, and to be ready to go into it in season
during this school vacation."

"That would really be but a very slight difficulty," rejoined the
lawyer.

"I wish I could see how you make that out, sir."

"Why, as it happens, in the property that Mrs. Dexter's grandfather left
her there's the strip called Hobson's woods, you know. The forest is a
pretty big affair. In fact, it's what's generally called wild country.
But there are a thousand acres of the woods, worth about four dollars
an acre, that now belong to Mrs. Dexter. She authorized me to find a
buyer for that bit of the forest, but it seems to be out of the
question. Now, on Mrs. Dexter's land, in about the middle of it, and
less than two hundred feet off the main trail, is one of the few real
old log cabins left in this part of the United States. The cabin is in
pretty good repair, too, I fancy, for Mrs. Dexter's grandfather used to
do logging out that way. Later in his life, when he had amassed money,
the old gentleman used to go out to that cabin to live for a while, two
or three times in every year. The place was in excellent repair when he
died. It is still, I imagine."

There was a breathless silence as the lawyer ceased speaking. How the
thought of that log cabin, out in the deep forest, appealed to the
imaginations of such Grammar School boys as these!

"Well, sir?" asked Greg breathlessly, at last.

"Young men, if your parents should consent to your going on such a wild,
madcap picnic in mid-winter, I would let you have the use