The two boys tugged at opposite ends of the stick. Then suddenly and quite without warning something happened. The dead wood parted and Bob hurtled backward off the rock where he had been standing and landed in a snow-drift; while Van, much to his astonishment, sat down with abruptness in the wettest of the mud. Two more chagrined boys could nowhere have been found. Bob was the first to get to his feet. Shaking the snow out of his hair and collar he called: "Get up, you--unless you want to be swallowed up for life. My eye, but you're a sight! If your mother could only see you now. Well, your feet are out, if you did have to get in all over to do it. Now step lively if you don't want to get stuck again. You are a peach, I must say!" Van took the banter good-naturedly. "That's what one might call being buried alive," he answered. "Lucky it wasn't you! I'm tall and could keep my head out; but the mire would long since have closed over an abbreviated person like yourself and you would have been seen no more." Bob winced. He was sensitive about his height. Clambering up on the rock beside his chum Van scooped up a handful of clean snow and with it washed his hands and face. "There!" he said at length. "I'm just as tidy as if it had not happened." "I can't exactly agree with you," replied Bob, "but I guess you'll have to do. Come on now. Goodness only knows where David and the sledge have got to by this time." They hurried up the hill. "There's David!" Van said, as they reached the crest of the rise. It was David sure enough; and standing beside him in his customary motionless attitude was the Admiral harnessed into a great sledge surmounted by a barrel into which David was pouring the sap as fast as he gathered it. At the moment the man was busy detaching one of the sap buckets from the trunk of a giant maple. The boys joined him. "What are you doing, Dave?" asked Van curiously.