"Well, you see, I talked a lot with that feller that got lost in there; and he told a heap of interesting things about the blooming old swamp, also where he always started into the same when trapping. You see, somehow I got a hazy idea in this silly head of mine that some time or other I might want to get a couple of chums to go with me, and try and see what there was in the middle of the Black Water Swamps."
"That's good, Seth," declared one of his mates, encouragingly.
"The smartest thing you ever did, barring none," added Jotham.
"It's apt to be of more 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.