"But what? We only brought flour and bacon," laughed Amy.

"How would a fine juicy steak taste about this time?" asked Mrs. Vernon,
winking at her old scouts. They knew what she meant.

"Oh, 'Home and Mother'!" sighed Judith, rolling her eyes heavenward.

Every one laughed, but the Captain added: "I really mean it! We may as
well stop now to cook that steak as to keep on in a half-fainting
condition."

"But, Verny! We didn't bring one bit of meat to camp, and the butcher
drives his rounds once a week," cried Amy.

"We'll just hunt around and chop down a steak," suggested Mrs. Vernon.
"Who wants to go with me to find the wooden animal that grows a steak
ready-made?"

Of course, they all went, except Julie and Joan who remained to build a
fire and start the bacon sizzling in the tiny pan. A scout-twist of
flour and water was kneaded by Joan and put to bake near the fire, and
then the girls sat and waited for the others to return.

The Captain blazed a way slowly into the forest wilderness, peering
under bushes and wherever a tree had been cut down--on its stump of a
trunk she always looked eagerly. After about ten minutes' search she saw
what she wanted.

"Ah! Here it is--a porterhouse, this time."

The new members saw a great chestnut stump, its jagged spears of wood
protesting against its untimely end. But all over the trunk grew
fungi--some larger, some smaller, and all of the same flat horizontal
shape, like a huge palm-leaf. These were carefully removed and handed to
the girls to carry.

"What are they for?" asked Judith, looking at the red juice that ran
over her fingers when she took the fungus.

"That's your steak--think it is too big for one?"

"The what?" exclaimed the other new members, skeptically.

"Beefsteak mushroom--finest steaks ever tasted," came reassuringly from
the Captain. "The ones growing on a chestnut stump are always the
sweetest, but the chestnut trees are disappearing so fast that soon we
will have no such mushrooms from them."

When they had gathered enough steaks for that meal, they returned to the
clearing where Julie and Joan awaited them. On the way back, Mrs.
Vernon showed the scouts the earmarks of the beefsteak mushroom.

"When I cut these from the tree they bled exactly as flesh will bleed
when it is cut. Now turn them over and you will see on the under side
that they have veins of red. That is the life-sap. We will broil or cook
them exactly as if they were steaks an