little slowly. Not but what he had plenty of them, but they seemed
disposed to crowd one another; so that whenever there was any thing to
be said in a hurry, Ford was sure to get ahead of him, and sometimes
even quiet Frank Harley.

"Must be I'm growing, somehow," he said to himself, "or I wouldn't be so
awkward."

The north road from Grantley led through a region that was, as the old
farmers said of it, "a-goin' back," and was less thickly peopled than it
had been two or three generations before. There had once been pretty
well cultivated farms all around some of the little lakes that were now
bordered by stout growths of forest; and the roads among the hills wore
a neglected look, many of them, as if it had ceased to profit anybody to
keep them in order.

There was "coming and going" over them, nevertheless; and the boys
managed to get a "lift" of nearly five miles in a farmer's wagon, so
that they reached the vicinity of Green Pond sooner than they had
expected, and with much less fatigue. The same farmer, in response to
anxious questioning by Dab, informed him,--

"Fish? Wall, ye-es. Nobody don't ketch 'em much nowadays. Time was when
they was pretty much all fished out, but I heerd there was some fellers
turned in a heap of seedlin' fish three or four year ago. Right away
arter that, my boys went over, and put in three days a hand runnin', but
they didn't get nothin' but pumpkin-seeds. Plenty of them yit, I
s'pose."

That was encouraging; but Ford at once remarked,--