HE six youngsters stood looking curiously at one another.
"I wonder who it can be?" muttered Dan.
"Some one who has no business here, anyway," returned Tom Reade bluntly.
"I wonder if it's some one who did live here, or some one who thinks he's going to keep on living here?" asked Dave Darrin dryly.
"Just the same, I'd like to know who has been living here," Dick went on. "For that matter, who would want to live here, in the depths of the woods in winter?"
"Well, we do, for one crowd," Greg reminded him.
"Yes; but we're boys with a craze for open air and something different," Prescott maintained. "Now, if men have been living here, the case is different. Men don't care about schoolboy junkets. If the man or men who have been living here are honest, I don't mind. Such men will move on if they find that we're here, and that we alone have the proper authority to live here. But suppose the men are not honest? Or rough characters?"
"It will depend on how many there are of them," responded Dan, with one of his broad grins.
"Why?" challenged Dick. "If we had to fight for the right to live in this cabin, how many do you think we could thrash?"
"Oh, I guess it won't come to that," remarked Tom Reade coolly.