rom Toby,
who was apparently, filled with indignation.

"Don't you believe it," Steve assured him; "because we all heard it go
off, and right then Bandy-legs was sound asleep alongside me. He's there
yet, bundled up in his blanket."

"You think so, but you d-d-don't know for s-s-sure," spluttered Toby,
distressed at the failure of his much vaunted trap to show results.
"C-c-chances are if you went and looked you'd f-f-find he had a
d-d-dummy there under his b-b-blanket all the time."

"Well, now," observed Max, frowning, "that never occurred to me before,
and while I can hardly believe our chum would play such a prank on us,
still you never can tell. So Toby, we appoint you a committee of one to
go back into the tent and see if Bandy-legs is there or not."

"I will!" Toby responded, firmly, as though he meant to have the truth
made manifest without any delay; and accordingly he hastened away from
Max and Steve, who started in to learn the way in which the heavy pole
had been seized by the loop.

Immediately Toby came running back, and his face looked more blank than
ever.

"Well, did you find him there?" asked Max.

"Yep, and as d-d-dead to the w-w-world as anything," replied the
stutterer, as he looked blankly at his two chums, and then toward the
swinging pole, as though, the puzzle had become more exasperating than
ever.

Steve gave a low whistle, which was his way of expressing amazement.

"Say, that must be a wonderful old stick, all right!" he declared,
jerking his thumb toward the object that was held in the tightened loop
of rope.

"B-b-but you d-d-don't really think it j-j-jumped up all by itself, and
g-g-got c-c-caught, do you?" Toby demanded, quite aghast.

"Well, hardly," said Max, though a little frown told that he too
considered the enigma a nut hard to crack. "Something that had life
about it made that stick do that trick; there's no doubt about that."

"Was it an animal or--a man?" Steve immediately asked, as he looked
nervously around, and half raised his gun, as though he expected to see
some ugly hobo advancing menacingly from the shelter of the forest.

Max was bending down, and evidently trying to examine the soil.

"I don't seem to see any tracks of a man here," he said; "and perhaps
you've noticed that about all the bait Toby put out is gone!"

"C-c-cracky! that's so!" cried Toby, although up to then he had not
thought to pay any attention to this important fact.

"Then some so