Roy and Chub followed him out and watched while the pickerel were transferred from the birch bark to the pan. Dick tossed the bark aside and Chub rescued it out of curiosity. “It made a pretty good platter,” he said. Then, “Here it is!” he cried delightedly. “What?” asked the others in a breath. “The verse! He wrote it on the other side of the bark! Listen! “Fish, so the scientists agree, As food for brain do serve. So help yourself, but as for me, I take them for my nerve! “W. N.” CHAPTER VIII A GUEST AT CAMP “For his nerve!” gasped Dick. Then they all howled with laughter until Dick leaped to the stove to rescue the coffee which was bubbling out of the spout. “Think of his needing anything for his nerve!” said Chub. “Isn’t he the dizzy joker? I guess he’s squared himself now for the butter and the bread, eh?” “I suppose so,” answered Roy, “but he had no business stealing our things.” “Oh, well, he’s paid us back.” “Just the same he had no right to--” But just at that moment there came an imperative tooting from the Ferry Hill landing, and Roy and Chub shoved the canoe into the water and paddled over for Harry and Snip. Harry was wildly excited as soon as she had learned of “W. N.’s” latest vagary, and insisted that they should at once set out on a hunt for him. The boys, however, were unanimously in favor of eating breakfast first, and Harry was forced to submit to the delay. The fish were delicious; even Snip agreed to that; and before the repast was ended the four were feeling very kindly toward the Licensed Poet. “I tell you what we’ll do,” said Chub. “We’ll get Snip to trail Seth Billings to his lair.” “How?” demanded Harry. “Let him smell the piece of birch bark,” answered Chub promptly. “Here, Snip! Come, smell! Good dog! Find him, sir, find him!” Snip sniffed at the bark in a really interested manner, and Chub was quite encouraged until Roy remarked that what Snip smelled was the fish. Snip next evinced a strong inclination to chew up the bark, and, foiled in this, he wagged his tail cordially, just to prove that there was no ill-feeling, and sat down. Chub shook his head. “He doesn’t understand,” he said. “He will never make a man-hunter.” As though pained at this observation, Snip got up and ambled down to the river for a drink, and Chub turned to the others triumphantly. “There!” he cried. “How’s that for intelligence? He smelled the fish and went right down to the river where they came from! Talk about your bloodhounds!” “Come on,” laughed Dick. “We’ll be our own bloodhounds.” “What are we going to say to him if we find him?” asked Roy as they set off, Snip far in the lead, along Inner Beach. “Thank him for the fish,” suggested Chub. “Tell him to keep out of our camp,” said Dick. “I don’t think I’d say it just that way,” remonstrated Harry cautiously. “You see, Dick, he’s a poet, and poets are very easily offended; they’re so--so sensitive, you know.”