It is hardly necessary to assure the reader that the young game-warden's heart was not in the task he had set himself. He believed that his father and Dan had come upon a bevy of Mr. Warren's imported birds and fired both barrels of their guns into it; and, as they were both good wing-shots, it was not probable that very many of the birds had escaped unhurt. Joe's business was to intercept them if he could, and to report them, regardless of consequences, if he found anything except squirrels in their game-bags.

"But I don't expect to find the least evidence against them," said Joe, to himself, "and there's where they are going to take advantage of me. What is to hinder them from doing as much shooting as they please at one end of the wood-lot, while I am skirmishing around the other end? They know well enough that the sound of their guns will draw my attention, and as soon as they have killed the birds they'll gather them up and dig out before I can stop them. It seems as though every business has its drawbacks."

And the longer Joe lived the firmer grew this opinion.

Half an hour's rapid walking took the young game-warden past his father's wood-pile, which now stood a good chance of staying where it was until it mingled with the mold beneath it, and down a little declivity to the brink of the gorge in which Tom Hallet had located the robbers' cave. Although he made constant use of his eyes and ears, he could not see or hear anything of the poachers, and neither were there any suspicious sounds behind him to indicate that Mr. Brown and his guide had kept on to Mr. Hallet's woods "to scare up another so-called game-warden."

"This is the way it is going to be all winter," said Joe, to himself. "Anybody who feels like it can slip in here, shoot all the birds he wants and slip out again before I can get a sight at him. There's Brierly, now; and that's his employer, looking out from behind that big tree on the right. They have followed me to see what I would do if I found father and Dan shooting Mr. Warren's birds."

While Joe was walking along the brink of the gorge, wondering if it would pay to scramble down one side of it and up the other, when he was sure that he couldn't catch the poachers if he did, he suddenly became aware that he was an object of interest to a couple of persons who were so anxious to avoid discovery that they kept themselves concealed—all except their heads, and them they concealed, too, when they saw that Joe was looking in their direction.

But Joe was wide of the mark when he declared that they were Mr. Brown and his guide, who were watching his movements in the hope of finding some grounds for complaint against him.

The concealed parties were watching him, it is true, but for a different purpose, and instead of seeing any reason for finding fault with him, they told each other that Mr. Warren's game-warden was wide awake, and that the fellow who shot any birds on those grounds would have to be lively in getting away with them, or Joe would catch him sure.

When they saw the latter looking at them, they moved out from behind their respective trees, and stood forth in full view. They were Tom Hallet and his friend Bob Emerson.

"Look here!" shouted Joe, who little dreamed what it was that brought the two boys on his grounds, and so far from their own quarters. "These woods are posted, and you can't get out of them too quick."

"You don't say so!" replied Tom. "Come up here and talk to us. You've had visitors already, haven't you? Who fired those four shots a while ago, and what did they shoot at?"

Joe slowly mounted to the top of the hill, and shook hands with Tom and Bob, before he made any reply to these questions. Then he said:

"I have had visits from two parties. One of them I saw, and the other I didn't see, and they were the fellows who did the shooting. They are on the other side of the gulf, most likely, and when I saw you dodging behind trees, I was trying to make up my mind whether or not I ought to cross over and hunt them out."

"What's the use of going to all that trouble?" exclaimed Tom. "I don't believe they got any birds; but if they did, they made all haste to pick them up and run with them. You say you saw the other party. Who were they? Did they have any birds?"

Joe answered the last question first.

"I took particular pains to see that their game-bags were empty," said he. "The guide was Brierly, and he called his employer Mr. Brown. He's no sportsman, whoever he is; he's a butcher," added Joe, who then went on to give the particulars of the interview, and to rejoice in the fact that Mr. Brown was several dollars out of pocket, having been confiding enough to pay Brierly in advance for the day's sport he thought he was going to have among the imported game that had just been "turned down" in Mr. Warren's woods and Hallet's.

"Hallet's!" exclaimed Tom. "Did they have the impudence to go over there after you left them."

"Mr. Brown suggested it, but I didn't see them go anywhere," was Joe's reply. "I warned them that they would find two game-wardens there instead of one, adding that if they wanted to know whether I had told the truth regarding myself they had better question you."

"Let's go back and see what they are up to," suggested Bob. "I say, Joe," he added suddenly, but not without a certain hesitation and constraint of manner that was too plain to escape the young game-warden's attention, "while you were walking along the gulf, you didn't—er—you didn't see anything at all suspicious, did you?"

"I didn't see anything but trees and bushes."

"And you didn't hear anything either, I suppose?" continued Bob.

"Not a sound. Why do you ask?"

"Oh—er—the idea just occurred to me, that's all."

"Do you think that the men who fired those guns are hiding in the gulf?" exclaimed Joe. "Perhaps I had better go down there and see."

This proposition called forth so emphatic a protest from both the boys, that Joe did not know what to make of it. They declared with one voice that such an idea had never occurred to them—that the poachers were safe out of harm's way long ago, and, besides, it would be putting himself to altogether too much trouble.

He'd find it awful hard work to make his way through the thick bushes and briars that covered the steep sides of that gorge, and long before he reached the bottom, he would wish he had let the job out. They knew all about it, for they had tried it.

With this piece of advice the boys bade Joe good-by, and hastened away in search of Brierly and his employer.

"Do you think Joe suspects anything?" asked Tom, as soon as Mr. Warren's game-warden had been left out of hearing. "I thought he looked at us as if he had a vague idea that we had other reasons than those we gave for telling him to keep out of the gulf."

"That's my opinion," answered Bob; and his companion took note of the fact that his voice trembled when he spoke. "I hold to my belief that those guns were fired by Silas Morgan and some one he has taken into his confidence. But of this I am certain: Silas went after that money this morning, and shot at the man who ran us out of the gulf yesterday."

"You still think it was a man, and not a wild beast that yelled at us?" said Tom.

"I know it as well as if I had been at his side when he did it," replied Bob, positively. "And, Tom, if Silas and his friend have shot somebody— Great Scott! If I ever take a hand in any more jokes of that sort, I hope I shall be shot myself."

"Seems to me, that Tom and Bob don't take any too much interest in their business," thought the young game-warden, as he started down the mountain toward his cabin. "The gorge runs through Mr. Hallet's wood-lot, and if those boys are going to confine their scouting to the covers on the lower side of it, I don't see how they are going to protect the birds. Well, it shan't stop me. As soon as I get around to it, I am going to cut a path down one side and up the other, and after that I shall cross over every day to take a look at things."

Joe was hungry when he reached his cabin, and then he found that there was one thing that had been forgotten—a clock.

He had already laid out a regular routine of work—setting aside certain things that were to be done at certain hours of the day or evening; but how was he going to follow it without the aid of a timepiece?

A few minutes reflection showed him a way out of his quandary. Among the other relics of better days that were to be found in his father's cabin was an old-fashioned bull's-eye watch which had not seen the light of day for many a long year.

Joe wasn't sure that it would run, but it wouldn't cost him anything more than a two-hours' walk to find out, and he decided that he would go down and ask his mother for it as soon as he had eaten his dinner.

"I can't set my house to rights to-day anyhow," thought he, "because I have wasted too much time in looking for father and Dan; but I'll have it all in order to-morrow, unless some other law-breakers call me up the mountain, and the day after that, I'll begin on my routine, and stick to it as long as I am here."

If you had been there, reader, to take a look around Joe's cabin, you would have told yourself that there was another and still more important thing that had been forgotten—a cooking-stove.

But Joe didn't miss it, for never in his life had he seen a meal prepared over a stove. He would not have known how to use one if he had had it; but give him a bed of coals in a fire-place, or on the mountain-side, and he could get up as good a dinner as any hungry boy would care to have set before him.

He had everything in the way of pots, pans and kettles that he could possibly find use for, but on this particular day he did not call many of them into service—nothing, in fact, but the pot in which he made his tea, and the frying-pan in which he cooked two generous slices of bacon.

He found potatoes in one of the baskets and a huge loaf of bread in another, and with the aid of these he made a very good dinner.

Then he shouldered his rifle (knowing the thieving propensities of the majority of the poachers who infested the mountains, he could not think of leaving so valuable a piece of property behind him), locked the door and set out for home.