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Frank in the Woods
Frank in the Woods
CHAPTER I
The Encampment
OUR scene opens in the swamp that stretches away for miles north of Lawrence.
It was a cold, dreary night. The wind moaned and whistled through the leafless branches of the trees, sending the snow in fitful gusts through every nook and corner of the forest. On the banks of a small lake, that lay hemmed in on all sides by tall trees, which bowed to every gust of the winter’s storm, was an encampment. A rude hut – built, however, after the most approved hunter fashion, with its back to the wind, and its front open to a cheerful fire – stood in a little grove of evergreens, ready to receive beneath its friendly shelter four boys, whom you could easily recognize as our old friends of the sailing and fishing frolics described in “The Young Naturalist.” We left them, after a hard day’s work at fox-hunting – Archie asleep on the bed, and Frank seated in his easy chair, reading one of his favorite authors; while George and Harry, who had a quarter of a mile to go before they reached home, were walking slowly along the road, so weary that they could scarcely drag one foot after the other. To enable the reader to understand how we come to find them here in the woods, twenty miles from any human habitation, we must conduct him back to Lawrence, and relate a few incidents with which he is not acquainted.
On the day following the one on which the foxhunt took place, the boys were too lame to tramp about, and they passed most of their time in the shop. Frank commenced to prepare the fox-skin for mounting in the museum, and Archie busied himself in putting his traps in working order. While thus engaged, Frank exclaimed:
“Archie, let’s go and make Uncle Joe a visit. What do you say?”
“I should like to go very much,” said Archie; “but you know it’s a mean journey to make in winter. I don’t like the idea of carrying my baggage on” —
“We need not carry any thing,” interrupted Frank. “I have been thinking it all over, and I don’t see why we can’t do as the Canadian trappers do – drag our baggage after us on sleds.”
The village boys had always been in the habit of visiting Uncle Joe in the summer; the journey could then be made with scarcely any inconvenience, for Glen’s Creek ran within a few feet of the old hunter’s cabin; but in winter the traveling was much more difficult, for the boys were obliged to carry their provisions, blankets, and other needful articles, on their backs. But Frank’s plan obviated this difficulty. The creek was frozen over, and using it as a highway, they could accomplish the journey to Uncle Joe’s almost as easily as with a boat.
“That’s a first-rate idea,” said Archie. “I wonder why we did not think of it before! Let us go right to work and make the sled.”
“We had better wait until we find out whether mother will let us go or not,” said Frank; “besides, we want Harry and George to go with us.”
“I think Aunt Mary will give her consent,” said Archie, laying aside his traps. “Let’s go in and ask her.”