fashion to Thorpe and
Charley. "How are you? Care if I camp here? What you making? By Jove!
I never saw a canoe made before. I'm going to watch you. Keep right at
it."

He sat on one of the outcropping boulders and took off his hat.

"Say! you've got a great place here! You here all summer? Hullo! you've
got a deer hanging up. Are there many of 'em around here? I'd like to
kill a deer first rate. I never have. It's sort of out of season now,
isn't it?"

"We only kill the bucks," replied Thorpe.

"I like fishing, too," went on the boy; "are there any here? In the
pool? John," he called to his guide, "bring me my fishing tackle."

In a few moments he was whipping the pool with long, graceful drops of
the fly. He proved to be adept. Thorpe and Injin Charley stopped work
to watch him. At first the Indian's stolid countenance seemed a trifle
doubtful. After a time it cleared.

"Good! he grunted.

"You do that well," Thorpe remarked. "Is it difficult?"

"It takes practice," replied the boy. "See that riffle?" He whipped the
fly lightly within six inches of a little suction hole; a fish at once
rose and struck.

The others had been little fellows and easily handled. At the end of
fifteen minutes the newcomer landed a fine two-pounder.

"That must be fun," commented Thorpe. "I never happened to get in with
fly-fishing. I'd like to try it sometime."

"Try it now!" urged the boy, enchanted that he could teach a woodsman
anything.

"No," Thorpe declined, "not to-night, to-morrow perhaps."

The other Indian had by now finished the erection of a tent, and had
begun to cook supper over a little sheet-iron camp stove. Thorpe and
Charley could smell ham.

"You've got quite a pantry," remarked Thorpe.

"Won't you eat with me?" proffered the boy hospitably.

But Thorpe declined. He could, however, see canned goods, hard tack, and
condensed milk.

In the course of the evening the boy approached the older man's camp,
and, with a charming diffidence, asked permission to sit awhile at their
fire.

He was full of delight over everything that savored of the woods, or
woodscraft. The most trivial and everyday affairs of the life interested
him. His eager questions, so frankly proffered, aroused even the
taciturn Charley to eloquence. The construction of the shelter, the cut
of a deer's hide, the simple process of "jerking" venison,--all these
awakened his enthusiasm.

"It must be good to live in the woods," he said wit