y,
for Mr. Bangs to get his.

Mr. Bangs, helping himself liberally, started in hungrily. Then he
stopped and looked around. They were watching him, interestedly. Mr.
Bangs made a wry face and rinsed his mouth out with a big swallow of
water.

"Well, I'll be hanged!" he exclaimed. "If it isn't sweet. Sweet chowder!
Oh dear, isn't it awful? What did it?"

Henry Burns, looking about him, pointed to a tell-tale tin can which,
emptied of its contents, lay beside the fire.

Mr. Bangs had made his chowder of condensed milk, sweet and sticky.

"I say," he exclaimed, "just throw that stuff away and we'll go up to
the landing for breakfast. I thought milk was milk. I never thought
about it's being sweetened."

They liked Mr. Bangs, in spite of his mistakes; and he wasn't abashed
for long, when he had pretended to be able to do something that he
didn't know how to do, and had been found out. He had a hearty way of
laughing about it, as though it were the best joke in all the world--and
there was one thing he could really do; he could cast a fly, and they
admired his skill in that. And when it came time for them to leave, and
bid him good-bye, they were heartily sorry to take leave of him, and
hoped they should meet him again.

But Mr. Bangs was not to be gotten free from abruptly. There was
bottled soda and there were stale peanuts over at the landing, where
Coombs kept a small hotel a little way up from the shore; and Mr. Bangs
insisted that they should go over and have a treat at his expense.

"You don't have to start till four o'clock," he urged. "You've got
plenty of time." And they needed no great amount of persuasion.

"Funny old place Coombs keeps," he remarked, as they walked from the
camps over to the landing. "All sorts of queer people drop in there over
night. Last night, there were some show people in some of the rooms next
to mine--they're going to leave to-morrow, for the fair up at
Newbury--and they kept me awake half the night, with their racket.

"They've got a fortune-teller among them, too," he continued. "Say,
she's a shrewd one. Of course, she's one of the fakers, but she's
downright smart--told me a lot of things about myself that were true.
Suppose she looked me over sharp. Say, I tell you what I'll do; I'll get
her to tell your fortunes. How'd you like to have your fortunes told?
I'll pay."

As matter of fact, they were not so enthusiastic over it as was Mr.
Bangs; but they didn't like to say