Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/180

 to be, it is hard to tell; but they made a great show of eagerness and enthusiasm, and Tom, not wishing to be out-done, floundered along the trail behind them. But he did not keep his companions in sight for more than five minutes—in fact, he didn't mean to. He gradually fell to the rear, and when the bushes closed up behind Roy Sheldon, who was the last boy on the trail, Tom sat down on a log and thought about it.

"That bear doesn't belong to me, and I don't know that it is any concern of mine whether they find him or not," said he to himself. "It is easier to sit here in the shade, even if one does have to fight musquitoes [sic], than it is to go prancing about through a swamp where the water, in some places, is up to the tops of a fellow's boots."

Tom suddenly brought his soliloquy to a close and jumped to his feet. There was a frightened expression on his face, but the determined manner in which he gripped his gun showed that he had no intention of running away until he had had at least one shot at the bear; for that it was the bear which occasioned