It was the next Saturday, just a week after the loss of the big trout, when old Davy Parmalee came to saw wood for Mr. Berry; and Mel, for want of anything more important to occupy his attention, went out to watch him work and talk with him a little. And Davy was quite ready to rest his saw in the log and himself on it.
"Now did any o' ye boys be down to the old dam a-fishing last Saturday a week?" he asked. "Did any o' ye hook a big trout and drop him again?"
"No-o," said Mel, catching his breath. "I don't think any of us did."
"Well, I found sech a one floatin' front o' my camp in an eddy, a Sunday mornin'," said Davy, "an' I guessed likely 'nough one o' ye boys lost him. He was a whopper, I tell ye, and hooked through the jaw. Must 'a ben somebody lost him. Anyhow, he made me a good solid breakfast."
"I wouldn't wonder," said Mel; and then he stood studying the earth at his feet for a long, long time.
"Davy," said he at length—"Davy, if you won't tell anybody else what you've just told me, I'll give you a pound of the best tobacco we've got in the store."
And the old man answered, briskly puffing away at his black clay pipe, "I ain't no call to tell it nowhere's I knows on; an' I won't ef ye say so. I'll be gretly obliged to ye for the 'backer, too."
"For it might have been somebody else that lost the fish," Mel reasoned with his conscience. "Anyhow, I can't own up 'twas mine—the boys would all be down on me so, and puff Clint Parson's up to the sky. I—can't—do—it. I don't believe 'twas mine anyway—I don't!"
So he passed it by and kept the secret; and so time went on, bringing the long summer vacation to a close.
"We ought to do something out of common to-morrow to end up with," said Mel, who, with a baker's dozen of his chums, was eating early apples on the shady side of Mr. Gerry's orchard wall. "What shall it be?"