At the foot of the hanger they met with a stroke of luck. They found a young beech-tree which had been blown down in some winter storm. It was now as dry as a bone and easy cutting, and Dick went to work with the little axe, and soon cut and split a heap of logs some eight or ten inches long and three or four inches through--first-rate stuff, for no tree in the wood burns more sweetly than beech. While the fire was under way, and while Dick hacked at the beech, Chippy had gone in search of clay. He was gone soms time, for he did not hit on a clayey spot at once. But he worked along the bank of the stream where the wash of the water had laid bare the nature of the soil until he struck upon a seam of red clay, and dug out a mass with his knife and the point of his staff. He brought the clay to the fire, and next fetched a billy of water from the river, and worked the clay into a mass which would spread like stiff butter. Now he took the hedgehog, opened it, and removed its inside. Then he began to wrap it in a thick covering of the clay. 'Aren't you going to skin it?' cried Dick, who had been watching his brother scout's doings with deep interest. 'I am,' said Chippy, 'but not now--leastways, it'll skin itself when the time comes.' Soon Chippy held in his hands a great ball of clay, inside which the hedgehog lay like a kernel in a nut. The fury of the fire had passed by now, and the small beech logs were heaped in a glowing mass of fiery embers. With a spare log Chippy drew the embers aside, and laid his ball of clay on the heated ground, and raked the ashes into place again. 'Now,' said he, 'when we're ready for supper, that theer 'ull be ready for us.' 'It doesn't look as if our supper was going to cost us much,' laughed Dick. Chippy looked up with his dry, quiet smile. 'As it's runnin' so cheap,' he said, 'we might goo in for suthin' extra. Wot d'yer say to a drop o' milk in the tea?' 'Where are we going to get it?' cried Dick. 'When I was down theer'--and Chippy jerked his head towards the river--'I seen a house acrost the fields. If ye'll turn me up a copper ot o' the cash-box I'll tek' a billy an' buy a pennorth.' Dick laughed and turned out a penny, and away went Chippy after the milk, while Dick watched the fire and the haversacks they had piled beside it. While Chippy was away an old man came up-stream whipping it with a fly-rod. The time of the evening rise was coming on, but very few circles broke the surface of the smoothly running river. Dick went over and asked him what luck he had had. 'Only two, an' them little uns,' said the old man. 'You see, this is a free stretch for about a couple o' miles, an' it gets fished a lot too much. There are some in it, an' big uns too, but they'm too wide awake to tek' the fly.'