Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/202

 the squatter almost as bitterly for walking off with the hard-boiled eggs, sardines, canned fruit and bottle of cold coffee, which he had provided as his share of the common dinner, as he did for stealing his fishing-rod.

"When Matt opens my bundle and finds all that buttered tissue paper in it I guess he'll wonder," said Joe, as he stepped into Roy's canoe and picked up one of the joints of the double paddle. "He won't know what I intended to do with it; do you, Bigden?"

After a little reflection Tom concluded that he couldn't tell what use the buttered tissue paper could be put to, unless Joe intended to start a fire with it, and the latter went on to explain.

"We always take a supply with us as a substitute for a frying-pan," said he. "After cleaning the fish in good shape, we wrap him up in this tissue paper, and then add three or four thicknesses of wet brown paper. In the meantime, the fellow whose business it is to see to the fire has taken care to have a nice bed of coals ready. We rake these coals apart, put in the fish, and cover him up so quickly