es?"

"Why, yes. You don't mean to scoop 'em up in that landing-net, do you?"

Dab looked at his friend for a moment in blank amazement, and then the
truth burst upon him for the first time.

"Oh, I see! You never caught any crabs. Well, just you lock up your
jewelry-box, and I'll show you."

It was not easy for Dab to keep from laughing in Ford Foster's face; but
his mother had not given him so many lessons in good breeding for
nothing, and Ford was permitted to close his ambitious "casket" without
any worse annoyance than his own wounded pride gave him.

But now came out the secret of the basket.

The cover was jerked off and nothing revealed except a varied assortment
of clams, large and small, but mostly of good size; tough old customers
that no amount of roasting or boiling would ever have prepared for human
eating.

"What are they for,--bait?"

"Yes, bait, weight and all."

"How's that?"

Dabney's reply was to draw from his pocket a couple of long, strong
cords, bits of old fishing-line. He cracked a couple of clams, one
against the other; tied the fleshy part firmly to the ends of the cords;
tied a bit of shell on, a foot or so from the end, for a sinker; handed
one to Ford; took the other himself, and laid the long-handled scoop-net
he had brought with him down between them, saying:

"Now we're ready. Drop your clam to the bottom and draw it up gently.
You'll get the knack of it in five minutes. It's all knack. There isn't
anything else so stupid as a crab."

Ford watched carefully, and obeyed in silence.

In a minute or so more the operation of the scoop-net was called for,
and then the fun began.

"The young black rascal!" exclaimed Dabney. "If he hasn't gone and got a
sheep's-head!"

"A sheep's-head?"

"Yes; that's why he beats us so badly. It's better than clams, only you
can't always get one."

"But how he does pull 'em in!"

"We're doing well enough," began Dabney, when suddenly there came a
shrill cry of pain from Dick Lee's punt.

"He's barefooted," shouted Dab, with, it must be confessed, something
like a grin, "and one of the little fellows has pinned him with his
nippers."

There need have been nothing very serious in that, but Dick Lee was more
than ordinarily averse to anything like physical pain, and the crab
which had seized him by the toe was a very muscular and vicious specimen
of his quarrelsome race.

The first consequence was a momentary dance up and down in the p