"I'd like to visit his place some time," said Fred, "just to see how the old fellow lives. I'll bet he's got quite a comfortable outfit there."
"He may live in very queer style," returned Randy. "According to what he says, and what that Bill Hobson told me, he must be a good deal of a hermit."
"Maybe he committed some sort of crime and the other Stevensons cast him off," suggested Andy.
"Oh, I can't think that! He didn't look to be a criminal," returned Jack. "Don't you remember what he said about taking up his residence on the island after his wife died? Maybe that loss made him feel as if he didn't want to mingle with the rest of the world."
The boys talked the matter over for some time, but could reach no conclusion whatever regarding the way the old lumberman had acted when Frederic Stevenson's name had been mentioned. Then, however, they stirred up some more squirrels and rabbits, and in the excitement of the chase that subject, for the time being, was forgotten.
They had brought a lunch with them, and at noon they found a convenient spot and there built a small campfire, over which they made themselves a can of hot chocolate, and this, with some sandwiches and some doughnuts, constituted the repast. Andy wanted to take time to clean a couple of the squirrels and cook them, but Jack and the others were afraid this would take too long, and so the idea had to be abandoned.
"Gee! but this tramping through the woods gives a fellow an appetite!" cried Andy, after he had eaten his second sandwich and his third doughnut. "I could eat a whole rabbit or a squirrel myself." And then, feeling in fine fettle, he proceeded to pull himself up on a near-by tree limb and "skin the cat," as it is called by acrobatic boys.
"You look out, young man, that you don't tumble down on your head," warned Jack. "This ground around here is frozen pretty hard."
"If I tumble, I know where I'll land," cried Andy gleefully; and, swinging himself back and forth on the tree limb, he suddenly let go and came down straight on Jack's shoulders. Both went down in the snow, and there rolled over and over, each trying to get the better of the other. Then Fred commenced to snowball the fallen pair, and Randy joined in; and a moment later there began a snowball fight on the part of all four which lasted about ten minutes.
"Cease firing!" cried Fred at last, as he dug some of the snow out of his left ear. "If this is going to be a snowballing contest, all right; but I thought we were out to do some hunting."