hs without walking twenty yards it is
only natural one's feet should go at first. We ought to have brought
some soap with us--I do not mean for washing, though we ought to have
brought it for that--but for soaping the inside of our stockings. That
is a first-rate dodge to prevent feet from blistering. Well, I must see
about the fire. I will go up to those trees on the hillside. I
daresay I shall be able to find some sticks there for lighting it. These
bushes round here will do well enough when it is once fairly burning,
but we shall have a great trouble to get them to light to begin with."

[Illustration: A SUPPER OF ROASTED SQUIRRELS.]

In half an hour he was back with a large faggot.

"It is lucky," he said, "there is a fallen tree. So we shall have no
difficulty about firewood. We ought to have brought a hatchet when we
got the other things. These knives are first-rate for cutting meat and
that sort of thing, but they are of no use for rough work. My old knife
is better."

While he was talking he was engaged in cutting some shavings off the
sticks. Then he split up another into somewhat larger pieces, and laying
them over the shavings, struck a match, and applied it. The flame shot
up brightly, and in five minutes there was an excellent fire, on which
the kettle was placed.

"We had better have our dinner first, Godfrey. Then I can go on steadily
with these fomentations while you take your gun and look round."

"Perhaps that will be the best way," Godfrey said. "We have nothing left
but six squirrels. We finished the last piece of bread this morning and
the meat last night. How had we better do these squirrels?"

"I will skin them, Godfrey, while you are seeing to the fire. Then we
will spit them on a ramrod, and I will hold them in the flame."

"I think we can manage better than that," Godfrey said, and he went to
the bushes and cut two sticks of a foot long with a fork at one end. He
stuck these in the ground, on the opposite sides of the fire. "There,"
he said, "you can lay the ramrod on these forks, and all you have got to
do is to give it a turn occasionally."

"How long do you suppose these things want cooking?"

"Not above five minutes, I should think. I know that a steak only takes
about eight minutes before a good fire, and these little beggars are not
half the thickness of a steak. They are beginning to frizzle already,
and the water is just on the boil."

The squirrels were pronounced very go