BLACK JOHN SMITHA mile or so below the village they beached the canoe on a narrow strip of a shingle at the lower end of a steep bank cut by an eddy formed by a sharp bend of the river. Ken collected wood and kindled a fire, and while the girl fished in the pool at the foot of the cut bank he scooped a quantity of blue clay from a deposit at the water’s edge. Twenty minutes later, with two sizable fish roasting in their own juices inside their thick clay mantles, he filled his pipe and settled back against the bole of a small spruce, as he watched Lois stretch her fish line between the trunks of two trees.
“Why do you do that?” he asked.
The girl smiled. “Did you ever carry a wet fishline around in your pocket? And besides, if you dry them out they last longer.”
“A man can always learn
