"How am I to get the gun across?" asked w.i.l.l.y, dolefully.

"That's a fact! It's too far to throw it, even with the caps off."

At length they concluded to go back for a piece of log they had seen, and to throw this down so as to lessen the distance.

They pulled the log out of the sand, carried it to the muddy spot, and threw it into the mud where they wanted it.

Frank stuck his pole down and felt until he had what he thought a secure hold on it, fixed his eye on the tuft of gra.s.s beyond, and sprang into air.

As he jumped the pole slipped from its insecure support into the miry mud, and Frank, instead of landing on the hummock for which he had aimed, lost his direction, and soused flat on his side with a loud "spa-lash," in the water and mud three feet to the left.

He was a queer object as he staggered to his feet in the quagmire; but at the instant a loud "oof, oof," came from, the thicket, not a dozen yards away, and the whole herd of hogs, roused, by his fall, from slumber in their muddy lair, dashed away through the swamp with "oofs"

of fear.

"There they go, there they go!" shouted both boys, eagerly,--w.i.l.l.y, in his excitement, splashing across the perilous-looking quagmire, and finding it not so deep as it had looked.

"There's where they go in and out," exclaimed Frank, pointing to a low round opening, not more than eighteen inches high, a little further beyond them, which formed an arch in the almost solid wall of brambles surrounding the place.

As it was now late they returned home, resolving to wait until the next afternoon before taking any further steps. There was not a pound of bacon to be obtained anywhere in the country for love or money, and the flock of sheep was almost gone.

Their mother's anxiety as to means for keeping her dependents from starving was so great that the boys were on the point of telling her what they knew; and when they heard her wishing she had a few hogs to fatten, they could scarcely keep from letting her know their plans. At last they had to jump up, and run out of the room.

Next day the boys each hunted up a pair of old boots which they had used the winter before. The leather was so dry and worn that the boots hurt their growing feet cruelly, but they brought the boots along to put on when they reached the swamp. This time, each took a gun, and they also carried an axe, for now they had determined on a plan for capturing the hogs.

"I wish we had let Peter and Cole come," said w.i.l.l.y, dolefully, sitting on the b.u.t.t end of a log they had cut, and wiping his face on his sleeve.

"Or had asked Uncle Balla to help us," added Frank.

"They'd be certain to tell all about it."

"Yes; so they would."

They settled down in silence, and panted.

"I tell you what we ought to do! Bait the hog-path, as you would for fish." This was the suggestion of the angler, Frank.

"With what?"

"Acorns."

The acorns were tolerably plentiful around the roots of the big oaks, so the boys set to work to pick them up. It was an easier job than cutting the log, and it was not long before each had his hat full.

As they started down to the swamp, Frank exclaimed, suddenly, "Look there, w.i.l.l.y!"

w.i.l.l.y looked, and not fifty yards away, with their ends resting on old stumps, were three or four "hacks," or piles of rails, which had been mauled the season before and left there, probably having been forgotten or overlooked.

w.i.l.l.y gave a hurrah, while bending under the weight of a large rail.

At the spot where the hog-path came out of the thicket they commenced to build their trap.

First they laid a floor of rails; then they built a pen, five or six rails high, which they strengthened with "outriders." When the pen was finished, they pried up the side nearest the thicket, from the bottom rail, about a foot; that is, high enough for the animals to enter.

This they did by means of two rails, using one as a fulcrum and one as a lever, having shortened them enough to enable the work to be done from inside the pen.

The lever they pulled down at the farther end until it touched the bottom of the trap, and fastened it by another rail, a thin one, run at right-angles to the lever, and across the pen. This would slip easily when pushed away from the gap, and needed to be moved only about an inch to slip from the end of the lever and release it; the weight of the pen would then close the gap. Behind this rail the acorns were to be thrown; and the hogs, in trying to get the bait, would push the rail, free the lever or trigger, and the gap would be closed by the fall of the pen when the lever was released.

It was nearly night when the boys finished.

They scattered a portion of the acorns for bait along the path and up into the pen, to toll the hogs in. The rest they strewed inside the pen, beyond their sliding rail.

They could scarcely tear themselves away from the pen; but it was so late they had to hurry home.

Next day was Sunday. But Monday morning, by daylight, they were up and went out with their guns, apparently to hunt squirrels. They went, however, straight to their trap. As they approached they thought they heard the hogs grunting in the pen. w.i.l.l.y was sure of it; and they ran as hard as they could. But there were no hogs there. After going every morning and evening for two weeks, there never had been even an acorn missed, so they stopped their visits.

Peter and Cole found out about the pen, and then the servants learned of it, and the boys were joked and laughed at unmercifully.

"I believe them boys is distracted," said old Balla, in the kitchen; "settin' a pen in them woods for to ketch hogs,--with the gap open!

Think hogs goin' stay in pen with gap open--ef any wuz dyah to went in!"

"Well, you come out and help us hunt for them," said the boys to the old driver.

"Go 'way, boy, I ain' got time foolin' wid you chillern, buildin' pen in swamp. There ain't no hogs in them woods, onless they got in dyah sence las' fall."

"You saw 'em, didn't you, w.i.l.l.y?" declared Frank.

"Yes, I did."

"Go 'way. Don't you know, ef that old sow had been in them woods, the boys would have got her up las' fall--an' ef they hadn't, she'd come up long befo' this?"

"Mister Hall ketch you boys puttin' his hogs up in pen, he'll teck you up," said Lucy Ann, in her usual teasing way.

This was too much for the boys to stand after all they had done. Uncle Balla must be right. They would have to admit it. The hogs must have belonged to some one else. And their mother was in such desperate straits about meat!

Lucy Ann's last shot, about catching Mr. Hall's hogs, took effect; and the boys agreed that they would go out some afternoon and pull the pen down.

The next afternoon they took their guns, and started out on a squirrel-hunt.

They did not have much luck, however.

"Let's go by there, and pull the old pen down," said Frank, as they started homeward from the far side of the woods.

"It's out of the way,--let the old thing rip."

"We'd better pull it down. If a hog were to be caught there, it wouldn't do."

"I wish he would!--but there ain't any hogs going to get caught,"

growled w.i.l.l.y.

"He might starve to death."