“What did you do—catch two at once, Joe?” asked Tom, as Joe produced his catch. “That’s what!” exclaimed young Joe. “I don’t see but one,” said Tom. “Well, look here,” said young Joe. He reached his fingers cautiously down the throat of the big sculpin, holding the jaws open with a piece of stick. Then, triumphantly, he dragged forth by the tail a smaller fish, that had in fact been swallowed the moment before Joe had caught the larger one. “The cannibal!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “That’s the meanest trick I ever had played on me by a fish.” But he added, smiling, “I give up, Joe. You’ve won. I wouldn’t catch a fish as mean as that sculpin. And to think that he’d gobble a clam before he had a fish half-swallowed! He’s a regular Squire Brackett.” Mention of that gentleman called attention to the fact that the squire and his son had ceased fishing also, and were casting off from the buoy, preparatory to rowing in. At the same moment the boys noticed that the crew’s boat was coming in sight from down below, and that the crew were waving for them to wait. They pulled up anchor, and rowed a little way in the direction of the other boat. Squire Brackett’s curiosity over the success of the crew was perhaps aroused, for he, too, waited a few moments. Then, when the crew had come up, Harry Brackett rowed near enough for the squire to look into the boat, with the others. The crew had certainly made a successful haul. There were a score of fine lobsters in the bottom of their boat—a score of good-sized ones, and one other. That one other caught the squire’s watchful eye. “Want to sell a couple of them?” he asked. “Yes, certainly,” replied Joe Hinman. “Well, give me that one,” said Squire Brackett, pointing to one of large size, “and that one, there,” pointing to the small one. Joe handed them over. “Those will cost you thirty-five cents, squire,” he said. “That small one will cost you more than that,” chuckled the squire to himself, as he paid the money. Then the squire, reaching a hand into his pocket and producing a folding rule, opened it and laid it carefully along the length of the lobster. “Ha!” he exclaimed, turning in triumph to the boys, “that lobster will cost you just twenty dollars. That’s a short lobster—a half-inch shorter than the law allows. You know the fine for it.” “Why, you don’t mean that, do you, squire?” asked Joe Hinman, dismayed at seeing the profits of their fishing thus suddenly threatening to vanish. “We haven’t shipped a single short lobster all this summer. But we don’t stop to measure them down here. We wait till we get up to the car. We have a measuring-stick there, and if a lobster is under the law we set him free, near the ledges off the camp. We throw out some old fish around those ledges, to see if we can’t keep them around there, and be able to catch ’em later—perhaps another year, when they’ve got their growth.”