Frank in the Woods

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Frank in the Woods, by Harry Castlemon
Frank in the Woods
The Gunboat Series. Books for Boys, by a Gunboat Boy. FRANK IN THE WOODS. Porter & Coates, PHILADELPHIA, PA.
FRANK AND ARCHIE SERIES.
BY HARRY CASTLEMON, AUTHOR OF “THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES,” “THE GO-AHEAD SERIES,” ETC.
PHILADELPHIA: PORTER & COATES. CINCINNATI, O.: R. W. CARROLL & CO.

FRANK IN THE WOODS.
OUR scene opens in the swamp that stretches away for miles north of Lawrence.
It was a cold, dreary night. The wind moaned and whistled through the leafless branches of the trees, sending the snow in fitful gusts through every nook and corner of the forest. On the banks of a small lake, that lay hemmed in on all sides by tall trees, which bowed to every gust of the winter’s storm, was an encampment. A rude hut—built, however, after the most approved hunter fashion, with its back to the wind, and its front open to a cheerful fire—stood in a little grove of evergreens, ready to receive beneath its friendly shelter four boys, whom you could easily recognize as our old friends of the sailing and fishing frolics described in “The Young Naturalist.” We left them, after a hard day’s work at fox-hunting—Archie asleep on the bed, and Frank seated in his easy chair, reading one of his favorite authors; while George and Harry, who had a quarter of a mile to go before they reached home, were walking slowly along the road, so weary that they could scarcely drag one foot after the other. To enable the reader to understand how we come to find them here in the woods, twenty miles from any human habitation, we must conduct him back to Lawrence, and relate a few incidents with which he is not acquainted.
On the day following the one on which the foxhunt took place, the boys were too lame to tramp about, and they passed most of their time in the shop. Frank commenced to prepare the fox-skin for mounting in the museum, and Archie busied himself in putting his traps in working order. While thus engaged, Frank exclaimed: