his wake, so that once more they were making
steady progress.

"I wouldn't care so much," grumbled Fritz, as he trailed along, "if only
I had a gun along. But it's tough luck to be smooching through a place
like this, where a sly old cat may be watching you from the branch
overhead, and your trusty Marlin hanging on the nails at home."

"They say you always see plenty of game when you haven't got a gun; and
so I guess we'll run across all sorts of things, from bobcats to
alligators!" Paul went on to remark, whimsically, but there was one
scout who chose to take his words seriously, and this was Noodles.

"What's that about alligators?" he called out from his place at the rear
of the little procession. "Blease don't dell me now as we shall some
reptiles meet up mit pefore we finish dis exblorations. If dere iss one
thing I don't like, worser as snakes, dose pe alligators. I would go
across der street to avoid dem. You moost some fun pe making when you
say dot, Paul?"

"Sure I am, Noodles," replied the scoutmaster quickly, "because there
are no alligators or crocodiles native to the state of Indiana. I
believe they have a few lobsters over in Indianapolis, but they don't
count. But the chances are we will run across some queer things before
we get out of this place."

"What gets me," remarked Jotham, "is the way the thing came on us. Why,
we'd just about said that we'd like to explore the old swamp, from
curiosity if nothing else, when that balloon hove in sight, and settled
down where we'd have to push right into the center of the place to find
the man who was hanging to the wreck."

"Well, we had our wish answered on the spot, didn't we?" questioned the
patrol leader, "and it came in such a way that we couldn't well back
out. So here we are, up to our necks in business."

"I only hopes as how we won't pe up to our necks in somedings else
pefore long," came a whine from the rear, that made more than one fellow
chuckle.

A number of times Paul stopped, for one reason or another. Now it was
some little imprint of animal feet that had attracted his attention in
the harder mud at the side of the narrow ridge he was following; then
again he wanted to listen, and renew his observations.

Seth was watching him closely. Somehow he was reminded of that grizzled
old carpenter whom he had observed, when the addition was being put to
their house, and who, after measuring a board three blessed times, and
picking up his sa