or less use to us right now, and that's a fact,"
was the way Paul put it.

"I reckon," Andy remarked, looking thoughtfully at Seth, "that you could
tell right now whether we happened to be near that same place. It would
be a great piece of good luck if we could run across the entrance, and
the trail your trapper friend made, without going far away from here."

"Let's see," continued Seth, screwing his forehead up into a series of
funny wrinkles, as he usually did when trying to look serious or
thoughtful, "he told me the path he used lay right under a big sycamore
tree that must have been struck by a stray bolt of lightning, some time
or other, for all the limbs on the north side had been shaven clean
off."

"Well, I declare!" ejaculated Jotham.

"Then you've noticed such a tree, have you?" asked Paul, instantly,
recognizing the symptoms, for he had long made a study of each and every
scout in the troop, and knew their peculiarities.

"Look over yonder, will you?" demanded Jotham, pointing.

Immediately various exclamations arose.

"That's the same old blasted sycamore he told me about, sure as you're
born," declared Seth, with a wide grin of satisfaction.

"The Beaver Patrol luck right in the start; didn't I say nothing could
hold out against that?" remarked Fritz.

"Come along, Paul; let's be heading that way," suggested Jotham.

In fact, all the scouts seemed anxious to get busy. The first pang of
regret over giving up their cherished plan had by this time worn away,
and just like boys, they were now fairly wild to be doing the next best
thing. They entered heart and soul into things as they came along,
whether it happened to be a baseball match; a football scrimmage on the
gridiron; the searching for a lost trail in the woods, or answering the
call to dinner.

And so the whole eight hurried along over the back road, meaning to
branch off at the point nearest to the tall sycamore that had been
visited by a freak bolt from the thunder clouds, during some storm in
years gone by.

Paul was not joining in the chatter that kept pace with their movements.
He realized that he had a serious proposition on his hands just then.
If so experienced a man as that muskrat trapper could get lost in Black
Water Swamps and stay lost for two whole days, it behooved a party of
boys, unfamiliar with such surroundings to be very careful in all they
did.

But Paul had ever been known as a cautious fellow. He seldom acted fr