would you prefer?" asked the cook, with a
significant smile.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Francois; "boiled, indeed! a pretty boil we could
have in a tin cup, holding less than a pint. I wish we _could_ have a
boiled joint and a bowl of soup. I'd give something for it. I'm
precious tired of this everlasting dry roast."

"You shall have both," rejoined Lucien, "for to-morrow's dinner. I
promise you both the soup and the joint."

Again Francois laughed incredulously.

"Do you mean to make soup in your shoe, Luce?"

"No; but I shall make it in this."

And Lucien held up a vessel somewhat like a water-pail, which the day
before he had himself made out of birch-bark.

"Well," replied Francois, "I know you have got a vessel that holds
water, but cold water ain't soup; and if you can boil water in that
vessel, I'll believe you to be a conjuror. I know you can do some
curious things with your chemical mixtures; but that you can't do, I'm
sure. Why, man, the bottom would be burned out of your bucket before
the water got blood-warm. Soup, indeed!"

"Never mind, Frank, you shall see. You're only like the rest of
mankind--incredulous about everything they can't comprehend. If you'll
take your hook and line, and catch some fish, I promise to give you a
dinner to-morrow, with all the regular courses--soup, fish, boiled,
roast, and dessert, too! I'm satisfied I can do all that."

"_Parbleu_! brother, you should have been cook to Lucullus. Well, I'll
catch the fish for you."

So saying, Francois took a fish-hook and line out of his pouch, and
fixing a large grasshopper upon the hook, stepped forward to the edge of
the water, and cast it in. The float was soon seen to bob and then
sink, and Francois jerked his hook ashore with a small and very pretty
fish upon it of a silver hue, with which the lake and the waters running
into it abound. Lucien told him it was a fish of the genus _Hyodon_.
He also advised him to bait with a worm, and let his bait sink to the
bottom, and he might catch a sturgeon, which would be a larger fish.

"How do you know there are sturgeon in the lake?" inquired Francois.

"I am pretty sure of that," answered the naturalist; "the sturgeon
(_Acipenser_) is found all round the world in the northern temperate
zone--both in its seas and fresh waters; although, when you go farther
south into the warmer climate, no sturgeons exist. I am sure there are
some here, perhaps more than one species. Sin