t'll do to cook by."

"But hot weather's comin' soon," said old Hank, "and then you'll want to
cook out in the air, I reckon. Besides, it takes a power of wood for a
fire-place. If one of you will come along with me to the tin-shop, I'll
have a stove made for you, of the best paytent-right sort, that'll go
into a skiff, and that won't weigh more'n three or four pounds and
won't cost but about two bits."

Jack readily agreed to buy as good a thing as a stove for twenty-five
cents, and so he went with Hank Rathbone to the tin-shop, stopping to
get some iron on the way. Two half-inch round rods of iron five feet
long were cut and sharpened at each end. Then the ends were turned down
so as to make on each rod two pointed legs of eighteen inches in length,
and thus leave two feet of the rod for a horizontal piece.

"Now," said the old hunter, "you drive about six inches of each leg into
the ground, and stand them about a foot apart. Now for a top."

[Illustration: OLD HANK'S PLAN FOR A STOVE]

For this he had a piece of sheet-iron cut out two feet long and fourteen
inches wide, with a round kettle-hole near one end. The edges of the
long sides of the sheet-iron were bent down to fit over the rods.

"Lay that over your rods," said Hank, "and you've got a stove two foot
long, one foot high, and more than one foot wide, and you can build
your fire of chips, instid of logs. You can put your tea-kittle, pot,
pipkin, griddle, skillet, _or_ gridiron on to the hole"--the old man
eyed it admiringly. "It's good for bilin', fryin', _or_ brilin', and all
fer two bits. They ain't many young couples gits set up as cheap as
that!"

An hour and a half of rowing downstream brought the boys to the old
cabin. The life there involved more hard work than they had expected.
Notwithstanding Jack's experience in helping his mother, the baking of
corn-bread, and the frying of bacon or fish were difficult tasks, and
both the boys had red faces when supper was on the table. But, as time
wore on, they became skilful, and though the work was hard, it was done
patiently and pretty well. Between cooking, and cleaning, and fixing,
and getting wood, and rowing to school and back, there was not a great
deal of time left for study out of school, but Jack made a beginning in
Latin, and Bob perspired quite as freely over the addition of fractions
as over the frying-pan.

They rarely had recreation, excepting that of taking the fish off their
trot-line