"You won't be sorry after we're gone, will you?" asked Dick politely. "I can't afford to put sixty-cents-a-pound fish on my bill of fare," said the hotel man. At this moment two well-dressed, prosperous-looking, middle-aged men came strolling around the corner of the building. As Dick was about to cover his fish one of them caught sight of the speckled beauties, and stopped short. "Hello! Aren't these fine, Johnson?" the man demanded of the proprietor. "Going to buy these trout for the hotel?" "I can't afford to put such costly fish on the bill of fare," replied Johnson candidly. "Man, you don't have to," replied the other. "Send these trout to the grill-room ice-box. Let guests who want brook trout order them as extras. Why, I'll eat a few of these myself, if you serve 'em." "Certainly," nodded the other man. Proprietor Johnson had caught a new idea from the suggestion of serving the trout as an "extra" in the grill-room of the hotel. All of a sudden he began to scent a profit. "All right, young man," smiled Mr. Johnson. "Begin to unload. I'll have the scales brought out again." The weight proved to be a little over one hundred pounds. Dick accepted an even sixty dollars, while Harry Hazelton nearly strangled himself in his efforts to keep from cheering lustily. This money, too, was counted out. "Are you going to bring any more fish this way?" asked Mr. Johnson. "I can hardly say as to that, sir," Dick hesitated. "If you do, I can't agree positively to buy, but I'll be glad, anyway, if you'll give me the first chance. I will see how these trout 'go' in the grill-room in the meantime." "We'll give you the first call, sir," Dick nodded. "Thank you very much for this morning's business." "That boy is a budding merchant," thought Johnson, staring after Dick as the three high school boys trundled their cart away. But in this estimate the hotel man chanced to be wrong. "Let's hurry up and get away from the hotel---a long way off," urged Hazelton. "Why?" asked Dave. "It was a fine place---for us." "Yes; but I want to yell, with all my might," Darry declared. "Seventy-eight dollars---think of it!" "Nothing to get excited about," Dick declared calmly. "When did we ever make so much money in life same time before?" blurted Hazelton. "Never, perhaps," Prescott admitted. "We made money, this time, because we had something that everyone wants, and the supply of which isn't large. We would have made far more money if we had had a cart full of diamonds in the rough." "What are you talking about?" demanded Hazelton. "We don't know where to find diamonds." "I didn't say that we did," Dick rejoined. "But we had something that is rare, and in demand. The rarer a thing is that everyone wants the better price can be had for it. The bass didn't bring anywhere near as much money as the trout, just because people don't call for black bass as much as they will for brook trout."