door and he caught her, as it were, red handed. So in the acquaintance which was soon to start, poor Tom had at least this first little preliminary triumph.

In Administration Shack sat a man who might have been the girl’s father or elder brother; he seemed rather young for the one and old for the other. Tom soon learned that he was her brother.

He was a youngish looking man, Tom thought about thirty-three or four, but the fact that he had been for several days unshaved made it difficult to hazard a guess as to his age. He wore a gray flannel shirt and baggy corduroy trousers. He sat in one of the rustic chairs, one leg over the other, and a dilapidated cowboy hat perched upon his knee. He had been talking with Mr. Carleson, the resident trustee and camp executive.

Mr. Carleson wore the negligee camping outfit and he was far from being a parlor scout, but by contrast with the visitor he seemed positively nifty in his “roughing-it” attire. The studied protest against civilized formality made by scouting officials was here put to shame by this romantic looking stranger. He must have long since ceased to think of clothes from any point of view to have reached this negligent simplicity.

“Here he is now,” said Mr. Carleson, alluding to Tom. “Tommy,” he continued, “this is Mr. Ferris, who has charge of the work up on Overlook Mountain. They’re renovating the old hotel up there, you know. Somebody or other gave him the tip that he might find some one here who could help with the woods work, felling timber and all that; sort of an under boss. That the idea, Mr. Ferris?”

“It was the station agent at Catskill that told me about you folks,” said the visitor. “He seemed to think I might find a young fellow here who might like to take a flyer in work along adventurous lines—with pay. Just for a month or two of course. We’re trying to rush things through up there so the place can be re-opened next season. I guess there’s not much chance of that though, not the way things are going.

“We—eh—we lost a dog last week, killed by a wildcat. We went after the wildcat, found a bear that had been killed by a rattlesnake, found the rattlesnake’s nest and killed four of them. That wouldn’t appeal to you, I suppose? I tell that to every likely young fellow, it’s our star adventure, but it doesn’t seem to pull, somehow. My sister thinks she knows where the wildcat hangs out but we haven’t time to go after him.

“Let’s see,” he added, with the 

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