double supply of smoking tobacco and a box of gum. When his tongue
smarted from too much smoking, he would chew gum for comfort And he
read and read, until his eyes prickled and the print blurred. But the
next week he diffidently asked Ross if he thought he could get him a
book on astronomy, explaining rather shame-facedly that there was
something he wanted to look up. On his third trip Hank carried several
government pamphlets on forestry. Which goes to prove how Jack was
slowly adapting himself to his changed circumstances, and fitting
himself into his surroundings.

He had to do that or go all warped and wrong, for he had no intention
of leaving the peak, which was at once a refuge and a place where he
could accumulate money; not much money, according to Jack's standard
of reckoning--his mother had often spent as much for a gown or a ring
as he could earn if he stayed all summer--but enough to help him out
of the country if he saved it all.

When his first four days vacation was offered him, Jack thought a long
while over the manner of spending it. Quincy did not offer much in the
way of diversion, though it did offer something in the way of risk. So
he cut Quincy out of his calculations and decided that he would phone
down for a camp outfit and grub, and visit one or two of the places
that he had been looking at for so long. For one thing, he could climb
down to the lake he had been staring into for nearly a month, and see
if he could catch any trout. Occasionally he had seen fishermen down
there casting their lines in, but none of them had seemed to have much
luck. For all that the lake lured him, it was so blue and clear, set
away down there in the cupped mountain top. Hank had advised him to
bait with a salmon-roe on a Coachman fly. Jack had never heard of that
combination, and he wanted to try it.