All that night the storm raged and in the morning the snow was still falling. Pat and Alec from force of habit were up early, but seeing that there would be nothing doing outside they forbore to waken the three visitors and were not averse² to returning to their blankets for a couple of hours of extra sleep. How long the three boys would have slept is a question had not Alec dropped a pan which clattered³ noisily. Upton poked⁴ a sleepy face out from his bunk⁵.  
"What you fellers doing?" he demanded.
 
Pat grinned. "Getting dinner. Will you have some or will you wait for supper?"
 
Walter felt for his watch and looked at it. Then he tumbled out in a hurry. "Hey, you fellows!" he yelled. "Are you going to sleep all day? It's eleven o'clock and Alec is cooking dinner. We've missed breakfast and——"
 
"My tummy, oh, my tummy!"
murmured a sleepy voice from the opposite bunk. "What you giving us? It isn't morning yet." Hal thrust out a tousled head and blinked stupidly.
 
"It isn't to-morrow morning, but it will be this afternoon in about an hour," laughed Pat. "'Tis the way they do in Noo Yor-r-k, turn day into night," he explained to Alec.
 
"No such thing!" protested Hal indignantly. "It isn't more'n daylight now."
 
There was some foundation in fact for Hal's statement, for the little cabin, but dimly lighted at best, was even at this late hour in a semi twilight⁶, due to the snow that partly covered the windows; the effect was very much that of daybreak. The odor of frying bacon, however, was a potent⁷ inducement to get up, and by the time dinner was ready the boys were ready for it. There was considerable good-natured joshing over their ability to sleep and Pat warned them that if they repeated the performance they would be taken out and dropped in a snow-bank. It had been a good thing for them, however, just what they needed after their strenuous⁸ experience of the previous day, and beyond some stiffness they confessed that they never had felt better in their lives.
 
"What are we going to do this afternoon—start scouting⁹ for those thieves?" Hal asked as he wiped the dishes.
 
Pat laughed. "Not so that you'd notice it, me bye. We're going to stay right here. The storm's not over yet, and if it keeps on I'm thinking we'll be buried completely. However, it looks to me as if it will break away shortly, and then you'll have a chance to show what good little diggers they raise in Noo Yor-r-k."
 
"And in the meantime?"
 
"We'll enjoy all the comforts av home." Pat yawned and stretched.
 
"Which means, I suppose, that we'll sit around and play Simon says thumbs up, or something like that, all the afternoon," laughed Hal.
 
"Perhaps ye'd like to sleep some more," suggested Alec slyly.
 
"And perhaps you've got another guess coming," retorted Hal. "What's that thing you're whittling¹⁰ on?"
 
"A stretching board for marten," replied Alec.
 
"What's a stretching board, and how do you use it?" Hal was all interest.
 
"To stretch skins on. Dinna ye know that all skins have to be stretched?" Alec tossed the board one side and reached for another.
 
"Don't know a thing about trapping or furs except that Dad has promised me a new fur coat when I get back," retorted Hal. "I'm painfully and sublimely¹² ignorant, but willing to learn, and I have a hunch¹³ that there are others. Suppose you elucidate¹⁴ the facts by way of killing¹⁵ time."
 
"Here, here! That will do for you, Hal!" cried Upton. "Your alleged¹⁶ poetry is bad enough without springing anything like that. What have you been doing at that prep school—confabulating with the profs or flirting¹⁷ with the dictionary? Elucidate! I move, fellows, that if he springs anything more like that we throw him in the snow. I would suggest doing it anyway if his idea wasn't so good. Go to it, Alec, and tell us about fur."
 
"I dinna ken¹ where to begin," protested Alec as he carefully rounded the smaller of his board to a point so that it looked much like one of the shingle¹⁸ boats every boy knows.
 
"Begin with that thing you're making—stretching board, I believe you called it," said Hal.
 
"That would be holding the gun by the wrong end," protested Pat. "The story all happens before one of these things is needed." Pat was himself at work on a stretching board.
 
"Begin with the kinds of fur, and the ways in which it is trapped, and the life of a trapper and all that sort of stuff," suggested Upton.
 
"Just tell us what youse do every day and how youse live all alone and de scraps¹⁹ youse gets inter¹¹ wid de bears 'n' things, and how youse has t' foight for life, an' pass it out hot—right off de fire."
 
"That's the stuff, Sparrer! That's what we want," cried Hal, as everybody laughed. "Give us the story of trapping right off the griddle."
 
"Ye dinna find anything very hot aboot a trapper's life." Alec paused in his work to gaze reflectively into the fire. "It's mostly cold and lonesomeness and hard work. There's no fighting with the beasties worth mentioning; it's mostly fighting with storms and sometimes hunger, and a struggle with nature. I've sometimes wondered if some of the grand ladies and men, too, would be so proud and take so much pleasure in their fine furs if they knew what it has cost in suffering to man and beastie to get them. And yet I am no complaining, laddies. Ye ken that. It's a hard life, and yet there is something aboot it that gets down into a man and calls him, and he has to hit the trails and is no happy until he does.
 
"The fur that we get in this country is muskrat²¹, mink²², otter²³, marten, fox, lynx and once in a while fisher. Sometimes we get a few skunks²⁴, but not many so far in as this. We used to get beaver²⁵, but it is against the law to take the beasties at any time now."
 
"Which is the most valuable?" Hal interrupted.
 
"Black or silver fox. They're worth so much they don't count. I've trapped ever since I was knee high to a speckled fawn²⁶ and haven't taken one yet. I dinna ken what they're worth, but I've heard that more'n $2,500 has been paid for an extra prime skin."
 
"What makes 'em worth so much? Is it because the fur is so extra fine?" asked Upton.
 
"Fine nothing!" Pat broke in. "If there is any poorer wearing fur than fox I wish you'd show me. A large prime red fox will bring only four dollars to perhaps six or seven in a year when fur is scarce and high, and the fur of a black fox isn't any different or better. All that difference in price is because once in a blue moon Nature gets tired of red and tries black for a change, and people with more money than brains pay the price because it is rare and they can wear something that mighty²⁷ few others can have. It's fox, just the same, and it will wear out just as quickly as if it were common every-day red. It's a fad²⁸. But the saints defind us from any more brains till afther we have the hide av the black gintleman thot Jim and Alec have seen here in the Hollow!"
 
"Money does talk, doesn't it, Pat?" chuckled²⁹ Hal. "Here's hoping you get both the fox and the long price. By the way, what's a cross fox?"
 
"The prettiest baste³⁰ in the woods," returned Pat promptly³¹. "He has black legs and underparts, black tail with white tip, and gray head and body with a dark cross on the shoulders. But he's just a sport of the red fox, a variation in between the red and black. A perfect specimen³² is worth a lot of money, but nowhere near what a black will bring. Between the red and all black there are a lot of variations of the cross, and the price varies accordingly. But let's get back to regular fur instead of freaks. Have you looked over that price list I brought in, Alec?"
 
Alec nodded. "I see otter and fisher are quoted just the same, $15 for No. 1 prime. I think the two otter and the fisher we've got will grade that all right. Up here," he continued, turning to the boys, "marten pay us best because they bring us from $6 for No. 2 to $12 for large No. 1 prime and some years more than that. Lynx pay pretty nearly as well, when we can get 'em. The trouble is we don't get enough of 'em. We get some foxes and some mink. The latter are rather down now, but some years they are high and pay right well. Last and least, but like the pennies that make the dollars, are the muskrats³³. They're bringing only thirty cents now, but I have seen 'em as high as a dollar.
 
"In other parts of the country are other furs. Coon disna get up as far as this, and Arctic and blue fox dinna get as far south. We get some weasel which when pure white is quite worth the trouble of skinning, little as the critters are. Ye ken it is the ermine of royalty³⁴."
 
"How about bearskins? I suppose they are worth considerable," said Walter, glancing over at Spud's prize.
 
"Less than ye will be thinking," replied Alec. "Yon skin is prime—and will grade as large. What now would ye be thinking it would be bringing me from a fur buyer this minute?"
 
"Fifty dollars," ventured Hal.
 
Alec and Pat smiled. "What do you say, little doctor?" Alec turned to Upton.
 
Walter did some quick thinking. He had set in his own mind the same figure Hal had given, but he had caught that smile of the two trappers and he suspected that Hal was rather wide of the mark. It didn't seem possible to him that such a beautiful great skin could be worth less, but at a venture he cut it in halves. "Twenty-five," said he.
 
"Knock ten off of that, and ye will be aboot right," said Alec.
 
"What? Only fifteen dollars for that big skin?" Hal fairly shouted.
 
Pat laughed outright³⁵. "That's all this year. And they never are worth a great deal. You see, for his size even a rat is worth considerable more, and is therefore not to be despised. And when you consider the labor³⁶ of skinning a big brute³⁷ like that and then packing out his hide the rats are more to my liking³⁸ if there be enough of them."
 
"Don't you trap for bears at all?" asked Hal. "I had figured on seeing a bear trap and perhaps finding old bruin in one."
 
Pat smiled as he noted³⁹ the look of disappointment on Hal's face. "We don't trap them this time of year, son, because there are none to trap; they're denned⁴⁰ up for the winter," he explained. "............