Chub smiled as he turned and took up his journey. It was the hottest sort of a hot day, and the road wound on without a speck of shade for the better part of a mile. He crossed the railroad and after a while found himself at the summit of a hill, with the river valley stretching along beneath him north and south for as far as the eye could reach. There was a small group of sumac-bushes beside the road here, and he threw himself down in the scanty shade it afforded and rested for a few minutes. Then he climbed a stone wall, crossed an upland meadow, and so came to a stream. It was rather a good-sized affair and very noisy, for it was hurrying down-hill over a bed of boulders. Pools were few and far between here, but he followed the stream up as it wound around the side of the hill, and eventually found a place where a big lichen-covered rock backed the water up into a shallow basin. The place didn’t look as though it held many trout, but he selected a fly and made his cast. At the end of ten minutes or so he had landed a miserable little fish, not much more than a fingerling, which under ordinary circumstances he would have disdained to keep. But it was already approaching mid-afternoon, and he couldn’t afford to be particular. Two more youngsters were added to his string during the next quarter of an hour, and then Chub decided that he had enough for his purpose, for he only wanted to convince the Gipsies that he was a bona fide trout-fisher and not an emissary of the sheriff’s office. Stringing his catch on a willow twig, he disjointed his rod and slipped it back into its case, dropped his fly-book into his pocket, and took up his journey again. He kept on around the side of the hill and presently was back on the road, which had begun to dip into a narrow valley which divided it from the higher range of hills to the westward. He proceeded slowly and cautiously now, for he didn’t know how near the Gipsy encampment might be, and he wanted to look it over before he decided on a course of action. He met no one on the road save a farmer jogging along half asleep on top of a load of hay. Presently a speck of grayish white caught his eye. Surmising it to be one of the Gipsy tents, he left the road and plunged into the woods to the right. It was very still and warm. Once he thought he heard voices in the direction of the tent, and presently, as he went softly through the trees and undergrowth, the gurgling of a stream reached him. He kept on until he had found it, and then followed along the bank, feeling pretty certain that it would lead him to the encampment. Nor was he mistaken, for fifty yards farther on the tents came into view between the trees. He dropped to his hands and knees and worked cautiously forward until the undergrowth stopped. There, lying behind a bush, he reconnoitered.