to carrying Dick's breakfast from the
campfire up into the cave. This I did with alacrity. Dick and I
exchanged commonplace remarks aloud, but we had several little whispers.

"Ken, we may get the drop on them or give them the slip yet," whispered
Dick, in one of these interludes.

This put ideas into my head. There might be a chance for me to escape,
if not for Dick. I made up my mind to try if a good chance offered, but
I did not want to go alone down that canyon without a gun. Stockton had
taken my revolver and hunting-knife, but I still had the little leather
case which Hal and I had used so often back on the Susquehanna. Besides
a pen-knife this case contained salt and pepper, fishing hooks and
lines, matches--a host of little things that a boy who had never been
lost might imagine he would need in an emergency. While thinking and
planning I sat on the edge of the great hole where the spring was.
Suddenly I saw a swirl in the water, and then a splendid spotted fish.
It broke water twice. It was two feet long.

"Dick, there's fish in this hole!" I yelled, eagerly.

"Shouldn't wonder," replied he. "Sure, kid, thet hole's full of
trout--speckled trout," said Herky-Jerky. "But they can't be ketched."

"Why not?" I demanded. I had not caught little trout in the Pennsylvania
hills for nothing. "They eat, don't they? That fish I saw was a whale,
and he broke water for a bug. Get me a pole and some bugs or worms!"

When I took out my little case and showed the fishing-line, Herky-Jerky
said he would find me some bait.

While he was absent I studied that spring with new and awakened eyes.
It was round and very deep, and the water bulged up in great greenish
swirls. The outlet was a narrow little cleft through which the water
flowed slowly, as though it did not want to take its freedom. The rush
and roar came from the gorge below.

Herky-Jerky returned with a long, slender pole. It was as pliant as a
buggy-whip, and once trimmed and rigged it was far from being a poor
tackle. Herky-Jerky watched me with extreme attention, all the time
grinning. Then he held out a handful of grubs.

"If you ketch a trout on thet I'll swaller the pole!" he exclaimed.

I stooped low and approached the spring, being careful to keep out of
sight.

"You forgot to spit on yer bait, kid," said Bill.

They all laughed in a way to rouse my ire. But despite it I flipped the
bait into the water with the same old thrilling expectancy.

Th