Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/302

 just because that outlaw has chosen to take up his abode there! You don't know Joe. He'll go, you may be sure, and after he gets there, he'll give you a chance to show what you can do with a five pound trout."

"Why can't you go?" I inquired. I had already learned to like my new friend, who had shown himself to be so good-natured and so ready to tell me any thing I wanted to know, and I thought I would rather have him for company than any body else.

"It is possible that I may go, but I haven't heard any thing said about it. I should think I might be of some use to Joe and I would not be at all in his way."

"But what if that squatter should steal you again? I suppose you didn't fare very well while you were in his hands."

"Oh, I fared well enough," replied the canoe, who seemed to have a happy faculty of accommodating himself to circumstances. "But I didn't like the company I was obliged to keep, I tell you. Whenever Matt Coyle or his boys took me out on the water, I would have been only too glad to spill them out if I