He looked into the eyes of the woodsman. He winked a kind of challenge, and added, "Seems to me that ought to fetch 'em."
"Mebbe," Strong answered, gently swaying the rod. He was never too free in committing himself.
"Got it for Tommy," said the new sportsman. "Ketched a four-pounder with it—ask him if I didn't." Mr. Migley had the habit of self-corroboration, and Strong used to say that he never believed that kind of a liar.
"Le's go an' try 'em," Migley suggested.
The Emperor smoked thoughtfully a moment.
"D-down river, bym-by," he said, pointing at the cook-tent as if he had now to prepare the dinner.
Strong had seen the Migleys before, although he had never entertained them. They had paunched and pouted in territory not far remote from Lost River, and won a reputation which had travelled among the guides. They worked hard, and hurried out of the woods with all the fish and meat they could carry, and no respect for any law save one—the law of gravitation. They sat down or lay upon their backs every half-hour. Now, it seemed, they were to abandon the vulgar art of the pouter for one more gentle and becoming.
Strong hastened to the cook-tent, where he found Sinth treating the children to sugared cakes and words of motherly fondness.
"Teenty little dears!" she was saying when Silas entered the door.
She rose quickly, and hurried to the stove with a kind of shame on her countenance. Silas kept a sober face while he went for the water-pail, as if he had not "took notice." His joy broke free and expressed itself in loud laughter on his way to the spring.