ant 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."

"All right," responded Ruth, still meekly, but with dancing eyes.

The fishing place was reached and while yet the early rays of the sun
fell aslant the dimpling pools under the dam, the two threw in their
baited hooks. Curly evidently expected to see the girl balk at the bait,
but Ruth seized firmly the fat, squirmy worm and impaled it scientifically
upon her hook.

She caught the first fish, too! In fact, as the morning drew leisurely
along, Ruth's string splashing in the cool water grew much faster than
Curly's.

"I never saw the beat of your luck!" declared the boy. "You must have been
fishing before, Ruth Fielding."

"Lots of times."

"Where?"

Ruth told him of the Red Mill on the bank of the Lumano, of her fishing
trips with Tom Cameron, and of all the fun that they had about Cheslow,
and up the river above the mill.

Mid-forenoon came and Curly produced some