178 DAYS IN THE OPEN 



of the party went in search of him, he was dis- 

 covered proudly bearing toward the table a 

 canteloupe. But Jimmie did his best, and that was 

 quite enough to satisfy the happy members of our 

 little family. He could boil potatoes well, and the 

 water that he brought from Midge Creek was 

 always first-class. Then, too, we had cooks of our 

 own. 



" Time to stop," do I hear the weary reader say? 

 Very likely, but the half has not been told. You 

 should hear about the " hermit," with his long, 

 white hair and beard, his piercing eyes, his little 

 shack and garden and the romantic love-affair 

 which is said to have driven him into voluntary 

 exile. You have not heard of the hard tramp up 

 the canon, past almost innumerable cascades and 

 rapids, back and upwards until a pool is reached 

 where a great throng of mountain trout is 

 assembled. That marvellous rainbow which 

 followed the Sunday afternoon storm must be 

 ignored. The Junior's sand-wells, his fall from 

 the gang-plank resulting in a broken collar-bone, 

 the fracas with a colony of yellow-jackets, the 

 night of storm when we feared lest the cables 

 break and we go drifting at the mercy of wind 

 and waves but what's the use? You will never 

 know what you have missed through your insis- 

 tence that you've had enough. The writer had 

 intended to tell of the total depravity of those 

 trout, manifested on the Sundays of our stay with 



