swamp to find out whether it is Thad’s sister and Felix Jasper who are living somewhere about here; or if the gentleman made a bad mistake.”

“Yes,” went on Bob White, impulsively, for he was a true, warm-hearted Southern boy, a little touchy with regard to his “honor,” but a splendid and loyal comrade for all that, “and we’re bound to do it, I reckon, suh, or know the reason why.”

“The first thing we did when we got down here,” Giraffe went on to say, “was to pick up all the information connected with this swamp we could, which was not a great lot, because they seem to think it’s a terrible place, and few persons ever dream of penetrating its unexplored depths, except now and then a muskrat trapper, or an alligator-skin collector; though they do say it’s been an asylum for occasional negro convicts who broke away from the turpentine camps and were pursued by the dogs.”

“Huh! looks some like we might be up against the toughest proposition we ever tackled, believe me,” Step Hen observed.

“Well,” remarked Bumpus, composedly, “we’ve pretty nearly always come out on top, haven’t we; and according to my notion we’re strong enough to do it again.”

“There’s something pretty strong around here, and that’s a fact,” spoke up Giraffe as he changed his seat. “I wonder, now, if the decaying vegetation in these here old Louisiana swamps always tone up the air like that. Smells to me kind of like rank onions that have got past the useful and respectable stage. I can see how we’re bound to have a high old time if this is a specimen of swamp air, and we expect to breathe it for mebbe two whole weeks.”

“Oh! say, that ain’t hardly fair!” remarked Davy Jones; “alaying it all on the poor old swamp, when, honest Injun, I’ve been asniffing that same queer odor all day.”

He looked straight and hard at Bumpus as he said this. The fat scout immediately frowned as though he felt hurt.

“I know what you’re ahinting at, Davy Jones,” he remarked, hotly; “just because I choose to continue wearing my old suit, and keep the new one for another day you like to make out this outfit ain’t all right. I admit she looks a mite greasy, because I’ve helped cook many a fine meal while wearing the same. There’s associations wrapped up with every inch of this faded cloth, and you can laugh all you want to, but I decline to throw it away while on this trip. What’s a swamp but a muddy hole, and I don’t choose to spoil my brand new suit, if you do. Besides, Step Hen and me, we’ve got such stuffy colds in our heads we can’t smell a single thing.”

“Then for goodness sake, change places with me, and be a chum of Step Hen’s during the remainder of this whole trip. Besides,” added Giraffe, as he saw Bumpus getting as red as a turkey gobbler with indignation, “it’ll balance the two boats better, I’m thinking. How about that, Mr. Scout-master?”

“I was figuring that we could do better than we have so far; and if Bumpus is willing to change with you, let him,” replied Thad. “That will bring him in my boat with Davy and Step Hen. They say colds like that are catching, so perhaps both Davy and myself will soon have one.”

“Huh! I hope so,” muttered the Jones boy, sniffing the air suspiciously when poor Bumpus happened to move to windward of him; but the usually good-natured fat boy pretended not to notice the slur.

“Well, as we’re all through lunch, let’s make a start, for we expect to be deep in Alligator swamp long before night comes on,” said Allan, who had the second paddling boat, fashioned somewhat after the pattern of the old-fashioned dug-out canoe made from a log, in his charge, being the assistant patrol leader of the Silver Fox band.

Ten minutes later, and having packed all their stuff away, the boys were ready to continue their journey into the depths of the thickening wilderness where the hanging Spanish moss that draped the trees proved such a strange sight to them all, and gave such a graveyard look to their surroundings that more than one of them felt a little shiver of apprehension, as though they fancied all manner of mysteries must presently arise to confront them.

The boat containing Giraffe, Allan, Bob White and Smithy happened to be ahead when they came to where their progress was hindered somewhat by floating logs and other stuff; so Giraffe, without being told to do the same, stood up in the bow to punch his way clear. He made a vicious stab at what he thought was a floating log, but had no sooner struck his paddle against it than the seemingly harmless object made a sudden lunge, splashed water all over the boat, and disappeared from sight; while the astonished boy, losing his balance as his paddle slipped off the scaly armor of the old mossback alligator that had been sleeping so placidly on the surface of the lagoon that it had not noticed their approach, fell in with a tremendous splurge.

CHAPTER II.
AMONG THE PUZZLING SWAMP WATER TRAILS.

“Alligator!” shrieked Smithy; and as this was the very first saurian he had ever set eyes on, not in confinement, his excitement was hardly to be wondered at.

“Lookout, Giraffe, he’s after you!” cried Bumpus, from the other boat, close by.

There was no need of spurring the lanky scout on to any further exertions; for he had comprehended that the living log was a scaly reptile, even before he took that involuntary bath; and the instant that his head came above the surface again he made frantic haste to clamber back into the boat.

Allan had instantly stooped, and possessed himself of a repeating Marlin rifle, which he kept handy at all times now; and had that ’gator attempted anything like hostile action, the chances were that he must speedily have made the acquaintance of a soft-nosed bullet that would probably have finished his earthly career in a hurry.

No doubt the denizen of the swamp was even more badly frightened than Giraffe, for after that one whirl and splash nobody ever saw him more. But then, how was the lanky scout to know that? Imagination peopled that dark waters with a myriad of twelve-foot ’gators, all plunging toward the spot where he was struggling to drag himself back into the boat, though his soaked garments seemed to weigh very nearly a whole ton.

“Lookout, Giraffe, or you’ll upset us all!” shouted Bob White, who probably did not see any great reason for all this haste, because conditions always color such things differently.

“Help me in, somebody, can’t you?” gasped the clinging boy. “Want to see me bit in half, do you? Thad, you lend me a hand, since these other fellows won’t? Oh! what was that?” as a great splash was heard; but of course it was only Bumpus playfully striking at the water with the flat of his paddle, on pretense of “shooing” away the sportive and hungry alligator, though no doubt he had also in mind the idea of hastening Giraffe’s getting over the gunwale on wings of fear.

They managed to pull him aboard, where he stood looking all around, as though in the end a trifle disappointed not to see a few monsters showing their keen regret at being cheated out of a meal; for that would have always added flavor to the story when he came to tell it.

“Guess he’s gone down to the bottom!” suggested Giraffe; “I kicked with all my might all the time I was in the water, and that’s the only way to scare a ’gator, a coon told me. But you can laugh all you’ve a mind to, Step Hen and Bumpus, I reckon you’d a done as much as I did if it’d been you fell in. Why, I saw him open his