or more from the haunts of
white men, with nothing but plucky hearts to help them, and limited
ammunition to supply bodily needs.

The sun passed over their heads and sunk somewhere beyond the forest.
They could not tell where it vanished, for the camp was amid such dense
surroundings that they could hardly see beyond a hundred yards through
the branches.

With dusk, and after a sparse meal, it was decided to light a fire, more
for the sake of the cheering sight than the need for warmth.

Bob was the first to rise, and as he stood upright he was heard to give
vent to a decided--

"Bother it!"

"What's the matter?" grunted Alf, as he also proceeded to rise.

"Matter?" repeated his chum. "Nothing; only I have stuck my head into a
cloud of moths--big ones and little ones. There seems to be a regular
party going on under this tree."

"It's that luminous patch in the tree that we've been sitting under,"
said Holden, at the same time drawing his friend's attention to what
looked like a patch of light on the trunk of the maple about five feet
from the ground.

"That's curious," remarked Bob, bending forward to examine the spot. "I
wonder what it can be? It looks like the light on one of those luminous
match-boxes that are made so that you can see them in the dark."

"They say that rotten wood sometimes has that effect----"

"But this tree is quite sound. And see! There's another the same on that
tree to the right!"

It was certainly strange, and the boys picked up their guns and
sauntered over to examine the next trunk, on which they found the same
peculiar light attracting an equally numerous lot of moths of many
descriptions.

"There's another!" exclaimed Alf, pointing ahead of him.

"And another!"

"And another!"

By this time the boys were quite excited by their discovery, and when
Alf suddenly drew attention to the further discovery that the marked
trees were almost in a straight line, their excitement was still further
stirred.

"It's the strangest thing I ever heard of--in the natural history way,"
the younger lad said. "To find all these trees marked on the same side,
and all in a straight line--why, it would puzzle the brains of anybody
to explain it!"

Without any decided plan, and more out of curiosity than from any other
motive, the chums proceeded from one tree to another, examining each as
they reached it, and marvelling all the time at what they decided as
being one of the most remarkabl