"But I wish he had left our bread and butter alone," exclaimed Ellen. "Who knows how dirty his hands were!"
"This raid cuts our dinner down a little,—losing those partridges," said Tom. "So let's have our venison and some eggs fried with it."
But on looking into the basket, all the eggs were found to have disappeared, save eight!
"Worse and worse!" Addison exclaimed. "We shall have to fall back on potatoes, and do some good hunting and fishing during the rest of our stay here."
Tom was already slicing up the rather odd-looking venison, getting it ready to fry. Addison brought water and put on potatoes to boil; and Kate declared that she was going to make a dish of Indian meal mush, and have some of it to fry for breakfast, next morning.
Willis took the gun and slipped away, intending to knock over a few more partridges, to go with the one he had just shot, across the stream.
Ellen, too, went out to gather hazel nuts.
A dark bank of clouds had risen in the west, and the wind began to blow a little; it was not quite as pleasant as on the previous evening.
In the course of an hour our dinner was ready. Ellen had gathered a quart of nuts, and Willis came in with another partridge. It was not a good night for shooting, he said; and when he went inside our cabin to set aside the gun, he privately told Addison and me, that he had heard a dog bark off in the woods, to the west of the opening. Somehow it made us feel uneasy to think that some person, or persons, might be hanging about the place, though they had not shown themselves very evilly disposed toward us, having merely taken a loaf or two of bread and some eggs. Still there was no knowing who they were, or what their intentions might be.
The table was rigged up and we sat down to it as before. The fried venison was good and went well with our potatoes; and we had an egg apiece. But Kate's corn meal mush was the best dish, for we had plenty of butter and sugar to garnish it; and we also toasted some cheese.