“Say—what’s Sam doing?” questioned Ned, sniffing and frowning.
“He’s—makin’—dough—balls,” said Joe, between puffs of his freshly lighted pipe.
“Dough-balls!” repeated Hal, quite in the dark.
“Yep,” said Joe. “We take a lot o’ cheese and let it lay outdoors ’til it’s real old an’ then we mix it with flour, into a paste, an’ when it’s good an’ stiff we cut it into the right size for bait—like Sam’s doin’ now. Them’s dough-balls. Smell ’em?”
“Smell ’em!” cried both boys together.
“Well, the fish smell ’em, too,” said Joe, tersely.
“What you boys usin’?” inquired Sam, speaking for the first time since their appearance.
“Liver,” stated Hal.
“That’s better ’n dough-balls, I reckon,” grunted Sam. “But if you had four or five hunderd hooks to keep baited, you’d right soon run out o’ liver, I bet.”
“You see, we’ve only fifty hooks on each line,” explained Ned, modestly. “When we haven’t any liver we’re going to use frogs, and crawfish and things.”