eaks of dew to fish in can't know
anything about fishing."

"Stop quarreling, you two," said Dick. "Don't you know that such voices
as yours raised in loud tones would scare away the boldest fish that ever
swam?"

The three cast their lines out into the stream. They were of the
old-fashioned kind, a hook, a lead sinker, and a cork on the line to keep
it from sinking too far. Dick had used just such an equipment since he
was eight years old, in the little river at Pendleton, and now he was
anxious to prove to himself that he had not lost his skill. All three
were as eager to catch a fish as they were to win a battle, and, for the
time, the war was forgotten. It seemed to Dick as he sat on the brown
turf between the enclosing roots of the tree, and leaning against its
trunk, that his lost youth had returned. He was just a boy again,
fishing and with no care save to raise something on his hook. The wood,
although small, was dense, and it shut out all view of the army. Nor
did any martial sounds come to them. The rustle of the leaves under the
gentle wind was soothing. He was back at Pendleton. Harry Kenton was
fishing farther up the stream, and so were other boys, his old friends
of the little town.

The bit of forest was to all intents a wilderness just then, and it was
so pleasant in the comfortable place between the supporting roots of
the tree that Dick fell into a dreamy state, in which all things were
delightful. It was perhaps the power of contrast, but after so much
riding and fighting he felt a sheer physical pleasure in sitting there
and watching the clear stream flow swiftly by. He smiled too at the way
in which his cork bobbed up and down on the water, and he began to feel
that it would not matter much whether he caught any fish or not. It was
just enough to sit there and go through all the motions of fishing.

A shout from a point twenty yards below and he looked up, startled,
from his dream.

"A bite!" exclaimed Warner, "I thought I had him, but he slipped off the
hook! I raised him to the surface and I know he was two feet long!"

"Nine inches, probably," said Dick. "Allow at least fifteen inches for
your imagination, George."

"I suppose you're right, Dick. At least, I have to do it down here.
If it were a Vermont river he'd be really two feet long."

Dick heard his line and sinker strike the water again, and then silence
returned to the little wood, but it did not endure long. Fr