“I’ve got one!” suddenly cried Cleo, and she did manage to land, flapping on the grass back of her, a good-sized chub.

“Oh, you’re perfectly wonderful!” cried Grace.  “However did you do it?”

“My hypnotic eye!” laughed Cleo, as she proceeded, not without some difficulty, to unhook her fish, string it through the gills and put it on a string in a quiet pool to keep fresh.  “You can all do it, if you just make goo-oy eyes at them,” she joked, casting out again.

It would be going too far to say that they all made catches at once, for Madaline and Captain Clark were out of luck, but the others each caught two, and the Captain declared this would suffice for all.

“There is no use catching more of anything than you actually need,” she declared, bribing her girls to leave the fascinating sport.

“And may I cook one of my fish just as I please?” asked Cleo, when they were on their homeward way.

“Why, yes, I suppose so, if Alameda does not object,” Captain Clark answered.  “But what is your way, Cleo, dear?  If you intend to fry it in deep olive oil, I’m afraid—­”

“Oh, nothing as elaborate as that,” was the laughing reply.  “It’s just an experiment I want to try.  And yet it isn’t exactly an experiment, either, for I read how to do it in a camping book.  It’s baked fish in a mud ball.”

“A mud ball!” cried Grace.  “That doesn’t sound very enticing!”

“Well, it isn’t exactly mud, but clean clay,” Cleo explained.  “And before you plaster the clay around the fish, you cover him with green leaves from the sassafras bush, or some spice leaves.  It sounds awfully good, and I think it will look quite artistic.”

“Much better than it did at first,” agreed Margaret, laughing.  “Fancy muddy fish!”

And when camp was reached, much to the amusement, and the unspoken indignation of Alameda, Cleo was allowed to try her experiment.  Zeb cleaned the fish for her—­that was all she asked.  Then Cleo dug a hole in the soft earth and built in it a fire.

“What I’m going to do,” Cleo explained, “is to put a lump of butter inside the whole, cleaned fish.  Then I wrap him in leaves and outside of that I put a ball of wet clay.  Then I put the fish, clay and all down in the fire, cover it with embers and let it bake.”

“A sort of fish-ball,” commented Madaline.

“Well, you’ll see,” said Cleo.

She completed her arrangements, though it was rather messy work, especially the clay covering, but finally she finished and the lump of “mud,” as Alameda called it, was put to bake in the fire hole, hot ashes and embers being piled on top.

“Dat’s de craziest notion whut I eber hearn tell on,” grumbled Alameda to Zeb.  “I’se gwine cook do odder fish in mah own style.”

“I guess mebby as how yo’ better had,” he agreed.

Preparations for the evening meal went on, while Captain Clark and her True Treds tidied themselves after the fishing excursion.  Cleo was ready first and took a little run down to where her fire smouldered in the pit.