At trout fishing Dick had proved himself more than an expert.
Now that darkness was coming, Dick was bending over a low fire, watching a frying pan in which four speckled beauties, well dipped in batter, were sizzling merrily.
"This is the finest food I've ever had," declared Greg Holmes, swallowing another mouthful of trout and leaning back with a contented sigh.
"It certainly is great," agreed Dave Darrin. "Fellows, I've wasted some of my life in the past, for I never before knew the taste of brook trout."
"I tried 'em once," said Reade, "but they didn't taste as fine as these. With trout, I've heard, a tremendous lot depends upon the way they're cooked."
"Of course the cooking has a lot to do with bringing out the full flavor," Dick admitted modestly. "But, Tom, perhaps you hadn't done any hard work before eating trout that time. Exercise brings hunger, and hunger is the best sauce that food can have—-as we all ought to know."
"Exercise?" repeated Tom, with a laugh. "Yes; I've had that this afternoon, all right. You had me guessing when you told me you had such an important job for me. I didn't know, then, that you wanted me to boss the raft building and transporting the camp over here. It was exercise, all right. We ought to have taken an entire day to it."
Dick rose with the frying pan, dropping hot trout on four plates in turn, omitting only Holmes.
"You shall have a trout out of the next serving, Greg," Dick promised.
"I'm not worrying about myself," Greg returned. "But are you going to have anything left for yourself, Dick?"