Bob could easily have taken more but did not do it, because he knew that he and Tom could not dispose of them. He knew, too, that they would be a drug in the home market, Uncle Hallet having often declared that he had eaten so many trout since Bob came to his house that it was all he could do to keep from jumping into every puddle of water he saw.
The boys were adepts at forest cookery, and hungry enough to do full justice to their dinner.
When the meal was over, the only dish they had to wash was the small tin basin in which their tea was made, the squirrels and trout having been broiled over the coals on three-pronged sticks cut from the neighboring bushes.
After an hour's rest they put out the fire by drenching it with water, which they dipped from the brook with their drinking-cups.
Bob often paused in his work to look up at the high bank above, which was so steep that the top seemed to hang over the bed of the stream, and finally he declared that it would take so much of his breath and strength to get up there that he wouldn't have any left to carry him over the five miles of wind-fall that lay between the gorge and Silas Morgan's wood-pile.
"Well, then, we'll follow the brook," said Tom. "It will take us to the lake, if we stick to it long enough, or we can turn out of the gorge when we reach the place where our robber's cave is supposed to be located. What kind of traveling we shall find I don't know, for I have never been down this gulf; but I do know that we shall have farther to walk than if we go back the way we came."
Bob at once declared his preference for the "water route," reminding his companion that the longest way around is often the shortest way home.
He felt relieved after that, for he dreaded the almost impassable wind-fall over which his tireless friend had led him a few hours before; but whether or not it was worse than some things that happened as the result of his decision, and which he was destined to encounter before the winter was over remains to be seen.