For nearly half an hour Prescott saw nothing of his friends. Then Dave and Greg came in sight. Dick held up a string now numbering eleven trout, some of them unusually large. For answer Greg held up a crotched stick with not a single trout dangling therefrom. "There's more knack to this game than I can catch," muttered Darry disconsolately, "but I'd give a good deal to get the knack of it." "No man save the first trout fisherman of all ever learned without a teacher," Dick assured his chum. "Greg, you take a place farther down the stream, and I'll stay with Dave and try to show him some of the tricks. You may have my pole and line, Greg, for I shall be busy watching Dave." Many a pull at his line had Darrin, and many a fish was lost ere, under Prescott's patient instruction, he managed to land a trout weighing about a pound. "Whew!" muttered Dave, mopping his brow. "At this moment I believe I feel prouder than any general who ever captured a city." "You'll soon have the hang of it, now, Dave," was his chum's encouraging assurance. "Now, I'm going to hunt up Holmesy, and see if I can show him some of the knack." Greg proved a grateful though not very clever pupil. He was all enthusiasm, but the art of landing a trout appeared to him to be one of the most difficult feats in the world. "I don't believe I'll ever land enough to fill a frying pan," he said dejectedly. "Dick, the fellows are depending upon you. Take this pole and use it for the next hour." Later in the forenoon Greg had one small trout on a stick he had cut and trimmed for himself. Dave Darrin looked almost triumphant as he displayed three of the speckled ones. Both stared in envy at Dick's string of thirty-four trout. "Of course it'll take a few days of patient study of the game to enable you to make big catches," was Dick's consoling assurance. "I'd put in all summer, if I were sure I could master the trick in the end," said Dave. Greg said nothing, but felt less resolute about it than Darrin did. "Why, it's only fifteen minutes before noon," cried Dave, glancing at his watch. "Then it's high time to be going back," nodded Dick, "in case the fellows are depending upon us for their meal. If Tom has a lot of bass, though, we can store these trout in our new ice box---the cave." "And let the Man with the Haunting Face slip in there, after dark, and help himself!" grumbled Darry. "Somehow that idea doesn't make any hit with me." "Then we'll have to put in the afternoon," proposed Prescott, "in building a log-lined pit in the ground and moving ice from the cave to fill it. Then we can keep our fish supplies right up under our noses in front of the tent." "That's a little more satisfactory in the way of an idea," nodded Darry. For the purpose of taking a short cut they soon left the brook, going through a stretch of woods on their way to camp. Hardly had these high school boys entered the woods when they halted, for an instant, in intense consternation.