the answer. "But when the law is on the deer and partridges it
must be hard to keep to a regular diet of trout. I c'n stand them for a
while; but in the end I'd get sick of the smell of 'em cooking."

"Oh! I have plenty of good grub along," chuckled Obed. "I was on my way
home at the time I glimpsed your fire; and bein' full o' wonder
concernin' who could be around these diggings right now I crept up to
spy on ye. But say, soon's I glimpsed your crowd, and saw that you was
only a bunch o' boys, why I felt easier, 'cause I knew then you couldn't
mean to bother me any."

Now that sounded queer again, Bandy-legs thought. Why should any one
take the trouble to "bother" Obed Grimes, unless, indeed, he had been
doing something that he hadn't ought to, and hence expected to be
visited sooner or later by emissaries of the law, possibly in the shape
of angry game wardens?

All sorts of strange thoughts flashed through that active brain of the
boy with the bowed legs. He wondered whether Obed could be a desperate
young criminal. Had his family, those excellent Grimes of whom he had
spoken in such proud accents, cast him out as altogether beyond hope?
Bandy-legs could hardly think this when he looked again into that face,
and caught the gleam of those merry orbs. No, Obed might be a _peculiar_
sort of fellow, but really there did not seem to be much of guile in his
make-up; if it turned out to be so, then he, Bandy-legs, was ready to
call himself a mighty poor reader of character.

So he, too, relapsed into temporary silence and let Steve carry on the
interrogations; which the said Steve considered himself very well
qualified to do since he aspired in his secret soul to some fine day
study to be a lawyer.

"But why should anybody want to bother you, Obed?" he asked. "To hear
you talk in that way a fellow would think you had a lot of enemies
hanging around, trying the best they knew how to give you trouble."

"Well, I ain't had any mix-up ever since I've been here," admitted the
other, with a slight frown crossing his face; "but lately I got wind o'
some news that's worried me a heap. Fact is, I'm afraid I'm goin' to be
right smart bothered with a bunch o' thieves who'd like to _steal_ my
outfit from me!"

Steve fairly gasped. He could not make head or tail of what the other
was so deliberately telling him. Max, listening, and watching that
expressive face of Obed, secretly believed the newcomer was purposely
drawing Steve