"True enough, Joe! Nature is a grand one for remedies," answered the
doctor. "Still, it will be half a century or more before she can raise a
timber growth here again. Hulloa! Dol, what are you fellows up to?"

While his elders were studying the _brulee_, Dol, who objected to dreary
sights, had marched down to the brink of the stream, accompanied by
Royal's young brothers, Will and Martin Sinclair. The little river
gurgled and frisked along beside the burnt tract, like a line of life
bordering death. It seemed to the boys to prattle about its victory over
the flames when it stopped their sweeping course, so that the woods on
its opposite bank were uninjured, as were those beyond the brook in the
rear.

"We're studying the ways of the great sea-serpent!" shouted back Dol,
who was splashing about in a sedgy pool.

By and by when the guides had finished their work of making camp, when
they had pitched the tents, cut boughs for beds and fuel in the spruce
grove behind, and were cooking an odorous supper, the three juveniles
came slowly towards the camp-fire from the water.

"What on earth have you got there, young one?" asked Dr. Phil; for
Adolphus Farrar was bareheaded, and carried his hat very gingerly, with
its corners clutched together to form a bag.

"The big sea-serpent himself," answered Dol mysteriously.

Of a sudden he opened his dripping hat, and spilled out a small
water-snake, about ten inches long, upon the doctor's lap.

There was a great roar of laughter, in which Dol's abettors, Will and
Martin, joined with cheerful shouts. The little joke had the effect of
winning everybody's thoughts from roaring flames, wrecked forests, and
the dreary _brulee_. Uncle Eb killed the snake, maintaining that
water-snakes were "plaguy p'isonous," while Cyrus scouted the idea. The
supper that evening was a merry enough meal. The camp, lit by the ruddy
glow from its great fire, looked an oasis of light, warmth, and jollity
in the black and burnt desert.

The darky, hearing Cyrus declare that he was fearfully hungry, mixed
some flapjacks to form a second course, after the venison steaks and
potatoes. He had exhausted his stock of maple sugar, but he produced a
small wooden keg of the apparently inexhaustible molasses.

"He! he! he! Dat jest touches de spot, don't it?" he chuckled, when,
having carefully served each member of the party, he seated himself
about three feet from the camp-fire, with a round dozen of the thi