t amiable way:

"Much obliged for making that wish, Step Hen; and from present
indications I've got a sort of hunch that something is going to happen
along them lines. Woke up in the night after having a dream, and it all
came to me like a flash, where I'd been making a mistake. And as soon as
I get through eating, I'm going to work trying to start things just like
I saw in my dream. Oh! I'll get there, sooner or later, by hook or by
crook. You never saw me give a thing up yet."

"Hey! what's that?" remarked Davy Jones, quickly. "How about that time
you got in old farmer Collins' watermelon patch one night, and hooked a
nice big melon he had doctored, so as to teach the boys a lesson. Oh! I
know, because I was along with the crowd; and seems to me you gave up
everything you owned, during that never-to-be-forgotten hour. I know I
did; and I've never eaten a melon since without shivering."

"Say, quit that melancholy subject, won't you?" demanded Bumpus. "I
don't like to be reminded of my wicked past, because I've turned over a
new leaf since I joined the scouts. Why, you couldn't tempt me now with
the biggest grandfather watermelon ever grown. B-r-r! It makes me shake,
just to remember some things that happened in those old days, when I
went with Giraffe, and Davy Jones, and the rest of that lark-loving
crowd."

Half an hour afterwards Thad and Step Hen started out, guns in hand.
Knowing that the patrol leader was perfectly at home in the woods, no
one bothered about giving them advice; or predicting all manner of
direful calamities ahead. Let it snow and blow as it pleased, Thad was
enough of a woodsman to know how to make himself comfortable, and get
back to the camp on the lake shore in due season.

Of course Bumpus had been more or less disappointed because he did not
have an early chance to prove the merits of his new gun, since he had
been taking private lessons from one of the guides in the way of
handling firearms. But Thad had promised that the fat boy and Giraffe
should have the next chance for a hunt; they were canoemates, and seemed
often thrown together, perhaps because they represented the "fat and the
lean of it," and as Bumpus was fond of saying, "extremes meet."

Half an hour later, and the two young Nimrods had managed to get a
couple of miles from the camp. But as yet they had not sighted that
wonderful six-pronged buck which Step Hen was to lay low. They walked
along about fifty feet apart, Thad