“What does he do, Rob?” asked Tubby.
“He gathers the saplings, and occupies his evenings in camp by splitting and assorting and fastening them in bundles. These are later taken away in bulk. They are intended as hoops for barrels, nail-kegs, and such objects. The hoop man does a cracking big business in season, let me tell you.
“Then there’s the man who gets out the poles themselves to be used for various purposes; the fellow who hunts for certain crooked woods calculated to make good boats’ knees; the sassafras hunter; the ginseng and other root man, who knows where to pick up a little fortune in discovering patches of wild weeds that possess a marketable value when the roots are dug and properly cured; the herb gatherer; and last but far from least the bee man, who goes about looking for hives of wild bees in hollow tree-tops, so he can gather hundreds of pounds of honey.”
Tubby looked helplessly around him.
“Well, well,” he was heard to say, “you never would believe fortunes could be dug out of such forlorn-looking woods as these. It’s simply wonderful what some men can pick up, when others are as blind as bats in the daytime. I’m going to keep my eyes open. We might run across a diamond field.”
“Well, you may mean that as a joke,” said Rob, “but rare gems have been found around here, which brings up another calling that some men have followed. That is searching all the streams for mussels, because some pretty valuable fresh-water pearls have been discovered, they say, in Maine bivalves.”
“It beats all creation how many sources of revenue a smart man can unearth, if only he keeps his wits about him,” remarked Andy, who, apparently, was hearing this last bit of information for the first time. “If this terrible war continues much longer there’s likely to be another lot of professionals working industriously up here in the woods of Maine. They’ll be the friends of the Central Empires, who want to give Old England and her Colonies a backhanded blow by cutting off the supply of munitions and supplies that keeps on flowing toward the coast day after day.”
“Oh, why can’t the nations of the Old World keep the peace like it’s been kept for a hundred years between Uncle Sam and his big northern neighbor?” sighed the tender-hearted Tubby sincerely. “Here’s a boundary of over three thousand miles, and not a single fort to mark the dividing line; whereas over across the water, look at the enormous fortresses France and Belgium and Germany have maintained, though none of the Belgians’ stood the awful pounding of those enormous guns brought up by the Kaiser’s troops.”
“There’s a good reason for that, Tubby,” explained Rob. “Americans and Canadians speak the same tongue, and as a whole have the same aspirations. They understand each other, you see. It’s different over in Europe, where different nations hate like poison. We don’t seem to meet with the same measure of success down along our Mexican border, because those greasers never can understand our motives, for we think along entirely opposite lines.”
“When are we going to have a great World Peace, and war be abolished?” begged Tubby, almost piteously.
“Search me!” said Andy. “Because I don’t believe such a thing ever will be, as long as human nature is like it is; though of course I’d be glad to see it brought about. If the nations of the world could only form some sort of practical union, like that of the States now, and so were bound to keep the peace, it might be done. Happy the man who has a hand in such a vast undertaking. If the chance came to me to handle the steering wheel of such a glorious job, why, I’d feel as lofty as – as that hawk soaring right now away up there in the blue heavens!”
Tubby mechanically followed the extended finger of the speaker, and then uttered a sudden startled cry.
“Hawk!” he ejaculated derisively. “That shows your ignorance, Andy. Hawk, do you say? Why, bless your simple and confiding nature, don’t you know that object away up near the fleecy white clouds, and heading due north at this minute, is nothing more or less than an aeroplane? Rob, am I right?”
Rob was himself staring upward, and he hastened to reply:
“That’s just what it is, Tubby. After seeing so many of those mosquitoes of the upper air currents soaring above the hostile armies across the big pond, you are able to tell one the minute you glimpse it. Yes, that’s an aeroplane, as certain as that we are standing here gaping up at it. I want you to notice that it’s heading directly so as to cross the International Boundary line.”
“What does that mean, Rob?” questioned Andy curiously, meanwhile continuing to crane his neck.
“Well, I’m only making a guess,” Rob ventured. “The chances are that pilot up yonder may be connected with some vile plot to destroy railroad property in the Dominion of Canada, and is now bent on spying out the land so as to make a chart of the country.”
CHAPTER III
BY AEROPLANE ACROSS THE BORDER
When the leader of the Eagle Patrol made this astounding assertion both of his friends betrayed additional interest. Indeed, it was a question whether Andy or Tubby, by the rapt expression on their faces, showed the greater excitement.
Tubby had one great advantage over his comrade. He had been abroad with Rob and Merritt Crawford, and had watched aeroplane pilots, both of the Allies and the Germans, shooting like meteors across the skies, bent on their work of learning what was going on back of the enemy’s lines so as to give points to those who handled the monster guns far in the rear, allowing them to drop their shells exactly where most wanted.
“Well, to think of the nerve of that fellow!” exclaimed the indignant Andy. “He snaps his fingers at the proclamation of the President about all true Americans standing for strict neutrality. Why, he’s meaning to give those Canucks the best chance ever to protest and claim damages from our Government. Isn’t that a fact, Rob?”
“Just what it is, Andy,” replied the scout master, watching the course of the small object so far up in the air that it resembled a giant bird.
“If they blow up a bridge, and wreck a train loaded with millions of dollars’ worth of stuff, and it’s proved that the scoundrels passed over from our side of the border, Uncle Sam will have to pay the whole bill?” questioned Tubby, now becoming aroused in turn.
“No doubt of it, if the proof is forthcoming,” Rob assured him serenely, since he knew enough of treaties and international law for that.
“Then anything that’s done against Canada from our side is really a blow aimed at our own country?” questioned Andy, beginning to show signs of anger. “Why, if it stands that way, then those conspirators are just as bad as if they were trying to knock a big hole in the U. S. Treasury, from which untold oodles of money could drop out. They’re breaking the neutrality laws smack. I’d like to let ’em know just what I think of such sneaks. There ought to be some way to detect and punish such backhanded knockers.”
“Oh, there are plenty of ways!” asserted Rob. “The law is stern enough, if you only can catch them in the act. There’s the rub. They take all sorts of precautions to hide their identity. Who could recognize that chap up a mile or so from the earth? How does any one know that he’s meaning to drop lower presently, so as to take a lot of pictures of the railroad where it passes over a bridge or trestle?”
“Is that the way it’s done?” ejaculated the deeply interested Andy, who was more or less ignorant of how air pilots make themselves so useful in war times.
“Watch him!” snapped Rob, and all eyes were again focussed on the far distant object moving across the heavens, and passing some fleecy fragment of a floating