“Why, Ford, it’s a beauty!”

“Dab, do you s’pose as nice a pond as that hasn’t any thing in it but pumpkin-seeds?”

“No boat that I can see,” remarked Frank.

“We’ll fish from the shore,” said Dab.  “There’s a log that runs away out in.  Rocks too.”

Rocks and trees and natural ruggedness all around, and some ten or a dozen acres of clear, cold, beautiful water, with little brooks and springs running into it, and a brook running out on the opposite shore that would have to grow considerably before it would be fit for mill-turning.

“Boys,” said Dabney, “we’ve missed it!”

“How’s that?” asked Ford.

“Put on the smallest hooks you’ve got, right away, and try for minnows.  There must be pickerel and bass here.”

“Bass?  Of course!  Didn’t he say something about seed-fish?  That’s what they put in; and they weren’t as big as pins when his boys came for ’em.”

“Minnow-poles,” as they called them, could be cut from the bushes at the margin, and little fish could be taken at the same time that they were trying for large ones.  They found too, before long, that sometimes a very respectable perch or bass would stoop to nibble at one of the “elegant worms” with which Dick Lee had provided them.

“No turn of the tide to wait for here, Dab,” said Ford, “and no crabs to steal your bait off.  Hey!  There comes one.  Perch!  First game for my hook.”

“We’ll stay till dark, but we’ll get a good string.  Frank, your cork’s under.”

“Never fished with one before,” said Frank.  “I’ll soon get the hang of it.”

That was a capital school for it, at all events; and they learned that it might be a good thing for a little lake like that to have a bad reputation.

“Fished out years ago.  I understand now,” said Dab.

“Understand what?”

“Why, those fellows in the village that sent me out here were playing a joke on us,—­a good deal like one of Joe and Fuz Hart’s.”

“Best kind of a joke.  But if we tell about it when we get home, the whole village’ll be over here next week.”

“Then we won’t tell.  Hurrah!  I’ll get him in.  Steady, now.  If he isn’t a two-pounder! see him run?  Boys, this is going to be fun.”

They did not neglect their minnow-catching; and before a great while they were varying their bait, very much to their advantage.  How they did wish for a boat, so they could try the deeper water!  They worked their way along, from point to point, looking for the best spot, if such there were; and Dabney at last found himself quite a distance ahead of his companions.

“Boys!  Ford!  Frank!  A boat!  Come on!”

Lying behind the trunk of a tree that had fallen into the water,—­not much of a boat, to be sure, and without any oars or even rowlocks; but when the water was tipped out of it, and it was shoved in again, it actually floated.