set by them, all spread out in a great circle near the fire. At the fire
itself two or three men were busy with frying pans and great coffee
pots, and the savory smell of frying bacon, that never tastes half as
good as when it is eaten in the woods, rose and mingled with the sweet,
spicy smell of the balsams and the firs, the pines and the spruces.

"Oh, but I'm glad we're here!" cried Dolly, with a huge sigh of content.
"And I'm glad to see supper--and smell it!"

And what a supper that was! For many the girls, like Bessie, and Zara,
and Dolly, it the first woods meal. How good the bacon was, and the
raised biscuit, as light and flaky as snowflakes, cooked as only woods
guides know how to cook them! And then, afterward, the great plates
heaped high with flapjacks, that were to be eaten with butter and maple
syrup that came from the trees all about them. Not the adulterated,
wishy-washy maple syrup that is sold, as a rule, even in the best
grocery stores of the cities, but the real, luscious maple syrup that is
taken from the running sap in the first warm days of February, and
refined in great kettles, right under the trees that yielded the sap.

And then, when it was time to turn in, how they did sleep! The air
seemed to have some mysterious qualities of making one want to sleep.
And the peace of the great out-of-doors brooded over the camp that
night.




CHAPTER IV