"Why, it seems to grow on you," admitted Phil, with considerable animation. "In the start I didn't care a great deal about it, and sometimes called myself silly to want to spend so much time trying to circumvent little animals, and get a flashlight picture of them. It's hard work, too, because they're not only shy but cunning as well. What little I've managed to do along that line has made me keen on the subject. And right now I believe I'd rather shoot a moose with a camera than with my Marlin rifle."
Ethan laughed a little, and shook his head.
"I confess that I don't understand it, Phil," he went on to say. "The real thrill must be lacking. You can only get it when you're bent on bagging your game. That's the thrill that comes down to us from our savage ancestors who had to live by hunting."
"I'm able to judge of that, Ethan, because I've tried both ways; and I give you my word I feel just as much pleasure when I'm trying to outwit a cunning fox as you do when you trap one. I get his picture, and you have his pelt, that's all the difference."
"Well," replied Ethan with a grin, "when that same pelt brings you in more than a cool three hundred, it makes considerable difference in the end."
Lub began to make faces, and swallow very fast at hearing that, as though he had come near choking; but in fact it was to keep from chuckling, and thus arousing suspicion in the mind of the hoodwinked Ethan.
"I noticed you down on your hands and knees, Ethan, over where we thought we saw that moving figure of a man last night," Phil went on to say, changing the subject hastily, partly from the same reason that influenced Lub to cough and gasp; "did you find out anything?"
At that the other assumed a mysterious air.
"Well, first of all, we weren't mistaken, you want to know, boys," he remarked.
"Then it was a sure-enough man?" asked Lub, beginning to be deeply interested.