“What time are you going to start?”

“Four.”

“If I’m not down in the kitchen by that time, throw some gravel up to the window,” commanded Ruth.  “But don’t break the window.”

“Oh, shucks! you won’t go when you see how dark and damp it is,” declared Curly.

When, just after four o’clock in the morning, Curly crept downstairs from his shed chamber, knuckling his eyes to get the sleep out, there was a light in the kitchen and Ruth was just pouring out two fragrant cups of coffee which flanked a heaping plate of doughnuts.

“Old Scratch!” gasped Curly.  “Gran will have our hides and hair!  You’re not going, Ruth Fielding?”

“If you will let me,” said Ruth, meekly.

“Well—­if you want.  But you’ll get wet and dirty and mussy——­”

Then he stopped.  He saw that Ruth had on an old gymnasium suit, her rubber boots lay on the chair, and a warm polo coat was at hand.  She already wore her tam-o-shanter.

“Huh!  I see you’re ready,” Curly said.  “You might as well go.  But remember, if you want to come home before afternoon, you’ll have to find your way back alone.  I’m not going to be bothered by a girl’s fantods.”

“All right, Curly,” said Ruth, cheerfully.

Curly put his face under the spigot, brushed his hair before the little mirror in the corner, and was ready to sample Ruth’s coffee.

“We want to hurry,” he said, filling his pockets with the doughnuts, “it’ll be broad daylight before we know it, and then everybody we see will want to come along.  The other fellows aren’t on to the old dam yet this season.  The fish are running early.”

He brought forth a basket with tackle and bait, dug over night.  Ruth burdened herself with a big, square box, neatly wrapped and tied.  Curly eyed this askance.

“I s’pose you expect to tear your clo’es and want something to wear back to town that’s decent,” he growled.

“Well, I want to look half way respectable,” laughed Ruth, as they set forth.

The damp smell of thawing earth greeted their nostrils as they left the house.  No plowing had been done, save in very warm corners; but the lush buds on the trees and bushes, and the crocuses by the corner of the old house, promised spring.

A clape called at them raucously as he rapped out his warning on a dead limb beside the road.  A rabbit rose from its form and shot away into the dripping woods.  The sun poked a jolly red face above the wooded ridge before the two runaways left the beaten track and took a narrow woodpath that would cut off about a mile of their walk.

It was a rough way and the pace Curly set was made to force Ruth to beg for time.  But the girl gritted her teeth, minded not the pain in her side, and sturdily followed him.  By and by the pain stopped, she got her second wind, and then she began to tread close on Curly’s heels.

“Huh!” he grunted at last, “you needn’t be in such a hurry.  The dam will stay there—­and so will the fish.”