Maurice was doing some sort of writing at the table, by the light of the only lantern they possessed, and which did not afford any too generous a light.

Thad was rummaging about, looking everywhere for a steel trap he had once possessed, and which now seemed strangely missing.

“I wanted to try it ashore the worst kind tonight, because I’ve never stopped thinking of that fine ’possum we had; and from the signs where we picked up our wood I’m just dead sure a family of the ringtails hold out,” he was saying, as he turned things over, and looked in the most inaccessible corners.

Thad was gifted with a streak of stubbornness; when he wanted anything badly he hated to give it up the worst kind.

Consequently, although he had apparently hunted that whole cabin over from one end to the other, he kept “nosing around,” as his cruising mate observed, rooting here and there, and muttering his disgust.

“I’ve been told that there’s such a thing as putting a thing away too carefully, and now I believe it,” remarked Maurice, as he looked up for the tenth time to see the other bending far over, and actually pawing into a dark hole under the sheathing of the cabin side.

“But you remember seeing that trap after we started?” complained Thad.

“Sure I have; but since that early day you must have tucked it away in some place that’s just disappeared.  Joking aside, I wonder if it was that thing fell overboard the other day when you were romping about the deck with Dixie?” continued Maurice, as if a new idea had come to him.

Thad had a broad grin on his face as he turned around, still on his knees.

“What’s this?” he remarked, holding some object up.

“Well, now,” drawled the other, in his Kentucky way, “looks to me like it might be a trap; and since we only had one aboard it must be the missing muskrat gripper.  Where’d you hit it?”

“In this blessed hole, and for the life of me I don’t remember ever putting it in there.  If I did it must have been while I was asleep and dreaming.”

“Sure you didn’t expect to get a rat, and try and call it a bally ’possum?  Hey! what are you after now?  Expect to find the mate to it perhaps.  Think traps grow from seed like corn?” Maurice exclaimed, as he saw the other once more thrust his arm into the hole.

“Why, I tell you this ain’t the trap I had at all.  Must have been one poor old The Badgeley owned.  P’raps he kept his traps in here.  Say, wouldn’t it open your eyes some now if I pulled out a second one of the same?  Now, what d ’ye think of that?”

“I declare if it isn’t another of the same kind.  They do grow then.  Any more where that came from, Thad?” demanded the boy at the table, beginning to show a decided interest.

“Oh!  I don’t know.  Would you say that was anything like the breed?” and he continued to drag out objects which he held up until Maurice had counted five.