The three cast their lines out into the stream.  They were of the old-fashioned kind, a hook, a lead sinker, and a cork on the line to keep it from sinking too far.  Dick had used just such an equipment since he was eight years old, in the little river at Pendleton, and now he was anxious to prove to himself that he had not lost his skill.  All three were as eager to catch a fish as they were to win a battle, and, for the time, the war was forgotten.  It seemed to Dick as he sat on the brown turf between the enclosing roots of the tree, and leaning against its trunk, that his lost youth had returned.  He was just a boy again, fishing and with no care save to raise something on his hook.  The wood, although small, was dense, and it shut out all view of the army.  Nor did any martial sounds come to them.  The rustle of the leaves under the gentle wind was soothing.  He was back at Pendleton.  Harry Kenton was fishing farther up the stream, and so were other boys, his old friends of the little town.

The bit of forest was to all intents a wilderness just then, and it was so pleasant in the comfortable place between the supporting roots of the tree that Dick fell into a dreamy state, in which all things were delightful.  It was perhaps the power of contrast, but after so much riding and fighting he felt a sheer physical pleasure in sitting there and watching the clear stream flow swiftly by.  He smiled too at the way in which his cork bobbed up and down on the water, and he began to feel that it would not matter much whether he caught any fish or not.  It was just enough to sit there and go through all the motions of fishing.

A shout from a point twenty yards below and he looked up, startled, from his dream.

“A bite!” exclaimed Warner, “I thought I had him, but he slipped off the hook!  I raised him to the surface and I know he was two feet long!”

“Nine inches, probably,” said Dick.  “Allow at least fifteen inches for your imagination, George.”

“I suppose you’re right, Dick.  At least, I have to do it down here.  If it were a Vermont river he’d be really two feet long.”

Dick heard his line and sinker strike the water again, and then silence returned to the little wood, but it did not endure long.  From a point beyond Warner came a shout, and this was undeniably a cry of triumph.  It was accompanied by a swishing through the air and the sound of an object striking the leaves.

“I got him!  I got him!  I got him!” exclaimed Pennington, dancing about as if he were only twelve years old.

Dick stood up and saw that Pennington, in truth, had caught a fine fish, at least a foot long, which was now squirming over the leaves, its silver scales gleaming.

“It seems to me,” said Dick, “that the very young Territory of Nebraska has scored over the veteran State of Vermont.”

“A victor merely in a preliminary skirmish,” said Warner serenely.  “The fish happened to be there.  Frank’s baited hook was close by.  The fish was hungry and the result was a mathematical certainty.  Frank is entitled to no credit whatever.  As for me, I lure my fish within the catching area.”