The man by the fire glanced at the burnt flapjack, scraped it free from the pan, tossed it into the bushes, and straightened to his full height.
"Come into camp, Mr. Ellis," he said, politely. The freemasonry of caste operates very quickly in the wilderness; Ellis slid down the boulder on the re-enforced seat of his knickerbockers, landing, with hob-nailed shoes foremost, almost at the edge of the fire. Then he laid his rod aside, slipped the pack to the ground, unslung his creel, and, fishing out a handkerchief, mopped his sunburnt countenance.
"Anything else you're short of, Mr. Jones?" he asked, pleasantly. "I'm just in from the settlements, and I can let you have a pinch of almost anything."
"Have you plenty of salt?" inquired Jones, wistfully.
"Plenty; isn't there anything else? Bacon? Sugar?"
"Matches?"
Ellis looked at him keenly; good woodsmen don't run short of matches; good woodsmen don't build such fires.
"Certainly," he said. "Did you have an accident?"
"No—that is, several boxes got wet, and I've been obliged to sit around this confounded fire for fear it might go out—didn't dare fish very far from it."