"They were wise men. We will see what we can do when we get there. Nice boat this is. I can make her meandrew all the way. If we don't discover something, it won't be our fault."
"He just can row," began Quill to Mort, but at that moment the stranger began to pull a little more slowly, and they could hardly believe their ears. He struck into a ringing, musical song that kept time with the oars. That was surprise enough, but what made it bad was that they could not understand one word he was singing.
"Quill," whispered Mort, "I was pop sure he wasn't born in this country. He's a foreigner."
They were out of the pond now, and there was no question whatever of the crookedness with which the creek wound its way in and out among the pastures and meadows. There was nowhere a very strong current, and the boys were a little surprised to find their favorite stream at once so deep and so narrow. Its character was very different from any it was able to earn below the pond and down through the village.
"It's awful clean, though," said Quill, "and there's any amount of trees and bushes along the banks."
"Boys," exclaimed the stranger at last, "I'm going to try one of these shady hollows for a trout. Quill, you take an oar, and paddle me along slowly into that black-looking cove up yonder. I'll show you something new. Mort, you get back into the stern."
"He knows our names," muttered Mort.
But it was no fault of theirs if he did not. He gave Quill a few more directions, and then he stood well forward, with the light graceful rod they had called a "whip-stalk" poised in his right hand. The wind was gently blowing up stream, and the stranger said, very quietly:
"That'll do. Steady, now."
And then they heard the faint hum of the reel on his rod, and a gossamer flight of fine line, with three little bits of fuzzy things at the end of it, each about the size of a small gray moth, dropped on the water as light as thistle-down.