cook. I got here two hours back, and had plenty of time to fix
things as I wanted them for my one night out."

"Perhaps you'll make it two, if we decide to stay that long, eh,
Ralph?" asked Bud, who was feeling much more warmly toward the other
since partaking of the delicious quail. "You see, we've got plenty
of rations along for three, and you'd be as welcome to share with us
as a shower in June."

"I'll see about that to-morrow afternoon, Bud," replied the other.
"But before I forget it, I want to tell you boys about a couple of
queer men I happened to see while coming through the woods not more
than a mile or so away from here."

"P'raps timber prospectors" suggested Hugh; "I've known of such men
to come up in this region trying to spy out new fields for operating
their destructive saw-mills. Somehow I hate to see the forest
wiped out that way. A tree takes some hundreds of years to mature,
and then it goes down in a heap, to be sawed up into boards. It
seems like a shame to me every time I think of how the timber is
disappearing. I believe in the work of the Forest Reserve Board.
It's high time this country began to think of keeping what it's got
before everything is lost. But tell us about these men that you saw.
They were not tramps, Ralph?"

"Oh, no, they were dressed too well for that," replied the other
quickly. "I happened to sight them in time to duck behind a tree,
and they never once suspected that anybody was near. One was a tall,
thin man, a German, I thought, while the other was dark and
short,---fact is, I took him for a Chinese, a Japanese or a Korean