"Those lumbermen have them hypnotized," complained Will. "I'm going up to their fishing grounds to-morrow."
The other boys said they would accompany him. This left the girls to their own devices, since they did not care to go with the boys.
"Who's for a walk in the woods?" asked Mollie, and they all were eager to come along. In their short skirts and leggings they found it easy going, even in comparatively deep snow.
"Oh, it's great to be an outdoor girl!" exulted Betty, as she trudged along beside Grace.
"Yes. I wonder if Carrie Norton, the girl who fell out of the tree, would like this?" ventured Amy.
"She was a real outdoor girl, too," observed Mollie, reflectively.
Carrie, however, who figured largely in the third book of this series, had gone, as has been said, to live with a distant relative. Occasionally she wrote to her young friends.
The girls had gone about a mile, or perhaps two, from their camp, and were nearing the debatable ground where Mr. Jallow claimed a valuable strip of timber. Grace was just about to warn her companions not to trespass, when Amy called attention to something in the woods a short distance off.
"See the cute little log cabin!" she cried. "Let's see if any one lives there."
"If they do they must be frozen!" declared Mollie. "It is full of chinks and cracks."