nd you draw
some more fire behind it so that the back is warmed as well. When it
burns a good crust on both sides it is done."

"What are flap-jacks," I asked.

"Just pan-cakes made without eggs or milk," said Felix. "You mix a
quart of flour with a tablespoonful of baking-powder and put in water
till it is just so thin that when you take up a spoonful and let it
drop back you can see the shape of it for a few seconds before it
melts into the rest. You fry the batter in bacon fat or butter just
like pan-cakes, and the cakes are very good."

[Illustration: _A Summer Idyll_]

"That's a good tip for us," I said, "and another good thing to take is
cuddy biscuits, a kind of captain's biscuit. Soak them a few minutes
in water or milk and fry them. They're nice with tomatoes or anything,
or by themselves."

"Mebbe," said Felix, and his tone said, "Mebbe not." "I'm only
discussing general principles, and you've got to work your own way out
in the light of them. I've known an outfit come away without a
frying-pan. How do you make bread then?"

We had to give it up, and Felix went on: "Open your flour sack, turn
down the edge like it is in a baker's shop, make a little hole in the
flour and pour in water to make a pond. Mix in what flour you want to
use and get your dough into the shape of a snake, wind it round a
stick and cook it like that. You've got your bread then like a French
roll, and very good it is."

We all liked the idea of making bread every day and eating it hot.
Here was something to be had in camp that you could not get at home.
And we liked the idea of learning our cooking by means of first
principles. Whether we liked it or not, Felix liked talking about it,
and he began to grow anecdotal.

"Once," he said, "I met a whole lot of men, ten of them I should
think, camped on a cold frosty night with nothing to eat. They were
trying to do a journey of thirty miles on rough prairie and their
horses were tired and they could not get on. They had brought their
lunch and eaten it long ago, and they told me they were starving. They
had nothing to eat, nothing to do any cooking with and no wood to make
a fire with. I never saw such hungry people. They were new settlers
just out from England and it was up to me to do something for them.

"'What have you got in that great waggon?' I asked. They told me they
had some sacks of flour and two frozen quarters of beef, but there was
nothing to cook it in and no wood to