st soon get what he called his "second wind." After that he would be
good for hours, he fancied.

It must have been well on to eleven o'clock when Thad felt his companion
nudge him in the back. As he turned to look, Step Hen made a suggestive
gesture with his head, and pointed upwards.

There was a dead gray sky above them, and already a few scattered flakes
of snow, really the first of the season, were drifting downward, looking
like tiny feathers plucked from the downy breast of a snow goose.

Thad simply nodded his head to indicate that he too had observed them;
and at the same time he shook his finger toward Step Hen, afraid lest
the other might be itching to start a conversation. In fact, this was
just what the other scout was hoping to do. This grim silence had begun
to work upon his nerves--just walking on and on, with not a blessed sign
of the fine buck they expected to get, commenced to pall upon Step Hen,
in whom the instincts of a hunter had never been born; although of late
he had begun to develop a taste for roaming the woods with a gun over
his shoulder. But he had much to learn concerning the secrets that
Nature hides from most eyes, but which are as the page of an open book
to the favored few.

Step Hen began to twist his head around frequently. At first Thad
thought he was developing a new eagerness to discover signs of game; but
then he soon saw that the wistful expression on the other's face was
brought about by quite a different cause.

To tell the honest truth about it, Step Hen was trying to figure out in
his benighted brain just what the cardinal points of the compass might
be. It was not that he possessed any alarming interest in proving
certain facts Thad and Allan had explained, concerning the fascinating
game of learning where the north lay by marks on the trees; the general
direction in which they slanted; signs of moss on the north or northwest
side of the tree, and various other well proven methods of locating
one's self. Oh! nothing of the kind. Step Hen wanted to find out one
particular fact. They had started _north_ when leaving camp; and
now, if he could only learn that they were heading due south, it would
tell him that Thad had swung around, and was facing back home again; and
thus he would not be under the painful necessity of informing his
companion that he was tired of the useless hunt, when nothing worth
while showed up.

And then it happened!

Step Hen happened to have hi