While Warrender and Armstrong were stretching and pegging out the tent, Pratt started the stove, filled the kettle from the river, and assembled such utensils as they needed for their tea. These operations were punctuated by renewed sounds of shooting, which were drawing nearer through the woods that skirted the clearing.
"I say, you chaps," cried Pratt, "I wonder if I talked nicely, if I could coax out of them something gamey for supper to-night?"
"Wouldn’t you like to sing for your supper, like little Tommy Tucker?" said Armstrong.
"Excellent idea! As you know, I’ve got a select and extensive repertoire, and--hallo! Here’s my little dog Bingo."
A retriever came trotting out of the wood, stopped in the middle of the clearing, and gazed for a moment inquiringly at the tent, just erected; then turned tail and trotted back.
"A very gentlemanly dog," said Pratt. "No loud discordant bark, no inquisitive snuffling; evidence of good breeding and a kind master."
"Hi, there!" called a loud voice. "What are you doing on my land? Who the deuce gave you permission to camp?"
A stout, florid, white-whiskered gentleman of some sixty years, wearing a loose shooting costume, and carrying a shot-gun under his arm, hurried across the clearing, the retriever at his heels.
"I’m sorry, sir," said Warrender, politely. "We’ve come up the river, and this is the first suitable place we’ve found. If we had known----"
"Known!" interrupted the stranger. "You knew it wasn’t common land--public property. If you didn’t know, any one about here would have told you."
"Just so, sir. But we understood that a party had camped here a short while ago, and----"
"You understood, boy? And where did you get your information?"
"From a gamekeeper sort of man a little below on the other bank. He----"
"That’ll do," snapped the sportsman. "Take down that tent. Clear up all this disgusting litter, and be off. The place reeks with paraffin. Look alive, now."
[Illustration: "’CLEAR UP ALL THIS DISGUSTING LITTER.’"]
In silence Warrender and Armstrong began to loosen the tent guys, while Pratt put out the stove and started to carry the properties down to the boat. He alone of the three showed no sign of feeling; his friends sometimes said that he was perennially happy because he was fat, not, as he himself explained, because he had music in his soul. Warrender’s mouth had hardened, his face grown pale--sure indications of wrath. Armstrong, on the contrary, had flushed over the cheek-bones, and expended his anger in muscular energy, heaving unaided the tent to his back, and carrying it, the pole, guys, and pegs, with the ease of a coal-porter. The landowner stood sternly on guard until the place was cleared.