ously. "But
name those five zones; will you, please?"

"Sure!" wheezed Tubby, before Ferd could reply. "Temperate, Intemperate,
Canal, Torrid, and Ozone."

"Goodness gracious, Agnes!" gasped Dave. "Can you beat Tubby when he
lays himself out to be real erudite?" while the others--even the
professor and Mrs. Havel--could not forbear to chuckle.

But Dave and Ferd got busy at once while the others laughed, and
chaffed, and looked over the boys' camping arrangements. Dave was cook
and Ferd made and fed the fire. These boys had all the approved Scout
tricks for making fire and preparing food--they could have qualified as
first-class scouts.

Ferd started for an armful of wood he had cut down at the bottom of the
steep bank and suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, he slipped, his
feet pointed heavenward, and he skated down the bank upon the small of
his back.

"My goodness me!" exclaimed Frank Cameron. "Did you see that?"

"Sure," said Dave, amid the laughter of the crowd. "Poor Ferdy! the
whole world is against him!"

"You bet it is," growled Ferd, picking himself up slowly at the bottom
of the bank. "And it's an awful hard world at that."

"Come on! Come on!" whined Tubby Blaisdell. "Aren't you ever going to
get supper? You're wasting time."

Dave was expertly cleaning fish. Wyn ran to his help, finding the flour,
cracker-crumbs, and salt pork. The pan was already heating over the
blaze that the unfortunate Ferdinand had started in the fireplace.

"If you're so blamed hungry," said Dumont to the wailing Tubby, "start
on the raw flour. It's filling, I'll be bound."

"Say! I don't just want to get filled. I want to enjoy what I eat. I
could be another Nebuchadnezzar and eat grass, if it was just
_filling_ I wanted."

"Ha!" cried Dave. "Tubby is as particular as the Western lawyer--a
perfectly literal man--who entered a restaurant where the waiter came to
him and said:

"'What'll you 'ave, sir? I 'ave frogs' legs, deviled kidneys, pigs'
feet, and calves' brains.'

"'You look it,' declared the lawyer man. 'But what is that to me? I have
come here to eat--don't tell me your misfortunes.'"

Amid much laughter and chaffing they finally sat down to the
fish-fry--and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from
the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals
of a campfire, "the deponent knoweth not," as Frank Cameron put it.

Then Tubby got his banjo, Dumont his mandol