ne into some
commercial enterprise rather than to have become interested in forestry.
You know that the station master told him a storm was brewing, but he
paid no attention to the warning."

"That storm was the cause of Tom's vanishing," broke in Grace almost
dramatically. "I've always felt it. It made him lose his way,
then----Who knows what happened then?"

"I wish I could go with you, David," declared Hippy earnestly. "I would,
too, if I weren't tied up with a law suit which an irate traction
company is waging against the city of Oakdale. Although I am not a
woodsman, still I know the difference between a tree and a stump, and
during my long and useful career I have killed numbers of slimy,
slithery snakes."

"At least, that's something to be proud of," lauded Elfreda Briggs,
favoring Hippy with an amused smile. The stout young man's remarks were
quite in accord with her own distinct sense of humor. Hitherto she had
listened without comment, absorbing all she heard and mentally
appraising it in her shrewd fashion. She had chosen to break into the
conversation at that moment because of an idea that was slowly taking
shape in her fertile brain.

"I suppose," she continued nonchalantly, "that as David has just said,
it takes a woodsman to trail a woodsman." Her round eyes fastened
themselves on Grace. Knowing Elfreda as she did, Grace flashed the
speaker a curiously startled glance. Something of signal import to her
was about to fall from Elfreda's lips.

"I was just thinking of the story of Ruth Denton's father and old Jean,
the hunter, who used to live in Upton Wood. Don't you remember, you told
me about how he was hurt and Mr. Denton nursed him back to health! You
told me, too, that this same Jean had hunted all over the United States
and Canada. There's a woodsman for you! If he's still in Oakdale, why
don't you ask him to go and look for Tom?" Elfreda leaned back in her
chair, well pleased with herself. The expressions mirrored on her
friends' faces told her that she had scored.

"Why did we never think of Jean before?" wondered Grace in a hushed
voice.

"Good old Jean!" Hippy sprang to his feet and performed a joyful dance
about the room. "Why, of course he's the very man!"

"It was unforgivably stupid in me never to have thought of Jean,"
admitted David, looking deep disgust at his own defection.

"The reason none of us thought of Jean was because I made such a point
of keeping Tom's disappearance a