"What's that queer-shaped thing to the left?"
"Don't know—got any ideas, 'Hatchet'?"
"Guess somebody has taken the crowd for a lot of chumps, and thinks they will be dunces enough to go off on a wild goose chase. It's only those duffers across the lake—but they can't fool me."
Bob laughed. "We'll study it out a bit, anyway. If we only knew in what direction to start, it wouldn't take long to find out something."
Dave Brandon leaned over and scanned the mysterious paper carefully.
"Looks easy to me," he drawled. "That's the door, eh?—well, from the back of the hut we must go off at an angle for a half mile. Then, if three trees in a row are found, I guess we'll be all right."
"A large head on large shoulders," grinned Nat.
"But say, fellows," observed Bob Somers, with a sudden thought, "of course you looked for tracks? I suppose the visitor wore snow-shoes, though, and sometimes they don't make much of a mark."
"We started right in to hunt for them," replied Dave Brandon. "Had a little better luck than this morning, but the tracks led to the lake and ended. We walked around a bit, didn't see anything, then gave it up."
"How do you know they weren't made by some of us?"