The stranger ahead of the two boys was Herbert Watrous, the city youth upon whom Nick had sat down so hard three years before.

He was unusually tall when visiting the country school, and during the intervening time he had continued to grow upward, until his height equaled that of an ordinary man. He was scarce fourteen years old, but he lacked very little of six feet in altitude.

He was correspondingly slim, so that he looked as if a smart blow on the back would snap him in two. He was arrayed in a most gorgeous hunting suit of green, with all the paraphernalia which the hunter from the city thinks necessary when he honors the country with a tramp for game.

Herbert, beyond question, was fitted out in fine style, and there was nothing lacking, except perhaps skill. He carried one of the finest of breech-loading rifles, which would have been very effective in the hands of a party who knew how to use it.

The face of the lad had not changed in expression to any extent since Nick Ribsam drove him into the earth, but there was some downy furze on his upper lip and chin, while his voice was of that squeaky and uncertain tone heard when "changing."

"Hallo! is that you?" was the rather superfluous question of Herbert, as he waited for the two boys to come up. He recognized Nick, but of course was a stranger to Sam Harper, to whom Nick introduced him, and there was a general shaking of hands all around.

Young Watrous glanced rather askance at his old school-mate, but there was such a cordial welcome on the part of the young "American of Dutch descent" that all reserve vanished.

A certain loftiness of manner and conceit of expression, however, were natural to Herbert, and he did not fail to look down, in a literal and figurative sense, upon the two hunters.

"That's a fine gun you have there, Herbert," said Nick, venturing to reach out his hand for it.

"Yes," answered Herbert, passing it to him rather gingerly, "be careful not to drop it."

The gun was a beautiful weapon, known as the long range "Creedmoor." It was a Remington, highly finished, and cost $125. It had a front sight, known as the wind-gauge, with the spirit-level, and with the vernier sight on the stock, which is raised from its flat position when the hunter wishes to shoot a long distance, and is graduated up to a thousand yards, carrying a 44 cartridge.

"That isn't of much account in this part of the world," said Sam Harper, passing the weapon back; "it's light enough, for I don't suppose it weighs more than six or seven pounds."

"It's just the thing for these woods,"............