in was warm, they could
not be chilled while paddling vigorously, and Henry Burns said he was
beginning to like it.

Presently, in the far distance, a village clock sounded the hour. It
struck twelve o'clock.

"My, I didn't know it was getting so late," said Henry Burns. "What do
you say to a bite to eat?"

"I could eat that fish raw," said Harvey.

"No need. We'll cook him," responded Henry Burns. "There's the place,"
and he pointed in toward a grove of evergreens and birches. "That
village is a mile off. We don't want another walk through this drenching
country."

They were only too glad to jump out ashore.

"You get the wood, Jack, and I'll rig up the shelter and clean the
fish," said Henry Burns. Drawing out a small bag made of light duck from
one end of the canoe, they untied it and took therefrom two small
hatchets, a coil of stout cord, a fry-pan, a knife and fork apiece and a
strip of bacon; likewise a large and a small bottle. The larger
contained coffee; the smaller, matches. They examined the latter
anxiously.

"They're all right," said Harvey, shaking the bottle. "Carry your
matches in a bottle, on a leaky boat and in the woods. I've been in
both."

Taking the cord and one of the hatchets, Henry Burns proceeded to
stretch a line between two trees; then interlacing the line, on a slant
between other trees, he constructed a slight network; upon which, after
an excursion amid the surrounding woods, he laid a sort of thatch of
boughs.

"That's not the best shelter I ever saw," he said at length, surveying
his work, "but it will keep off the worst of the rain."

It did, in fact, answer fairly well, with the added protection of the
heavy branches overhead.

In the mean time, Harvey, having hunted for some distance, had found
what he wanted--a dead tree, not so old as to be rotten, but easy to cut
and split. Into the heart of this he went with his hatchet, and quickly
got an armful of dry fire-wood. He came running back with the wood, and
a few sheets of birch-bark--the inner part of the bark--with the wet,
outer layer carefully stripped off. They had a blaze going quickly,
with this, beneath the shelter of boughs.

They put the bacon on to fry, and pieces of the fish, cut thin with a
keen hunting-knife. The coffee, poured from the bottle into a tin
dipper, they set near the blaze, on some brands. They they gazed out
upon the drizzle, as the dinner cooked.

Harvey shook his head, gloomily.

"We