Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/205

 by the stream, still remembered that what  danger did lurk about them was bound to be unsuspected and unseen.

It had been, one day, Hugh’s turn to replenish the empty larder so that he had spent the whole  afternoon fishing about a mile from the cottage. Dusk was just beginning, yet he lingered for “just one more bite,” since luck had not been  good and he wished to carry home enough fish  for one meal at least. He waited long for a nibble, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

“It must be getting too cold for fishing,” he commented to himself. “Why, it feels like winter all of a sudden; it has changed a great deal since morning.”

He had just pulled in a flopping trout and had dropped it into the basket when a sudden sound  startled him so that he dropped his rod. It was the sharp crack of a rifle, followed immediately  by a second and a third, the prearranged signal  of alarm. The pirates had struck at last!

A mile is a long way to run when the course is over a heavily wooded ridge and through a valley