Of course they had plenty of other things to eat besides Steve's pet
dish. The boys made sure of this, not fancying the idea of having to
depend upon the musquash alone.

All of them but Steve tasted it and declared it fine. He could not be
coaxed to even sample it at the time; but Old Jim believed Steve would
come around in time.

"It's just because these plump little critters are so common," he
remarked, with a smile of satisfaction, as he emptied the balance of the
stew into his own pannikin. "If they cost four dollars each, now, and
only the millionaires could buy 'em, you'd think they beat anything
going."

"Yes," said bookworm Owen, "that's the way it was with diamond-back
terrapin. Time was in Virginia and North Carolina, yes, in Maryland, too,
when a man hired out to a planter along the coast, he had it entered in
the contract that he was not to be fed on terrapin. They were looked on
at that time as common stuff. To-day the rich pay five dollars apiece for
decent-sized little fellows. You're right, Uncle Jim, it makes a lot of
difference."

Talking in this strain, and picking up useful as well as interesting
information from time to time, as Trapper Jim explained things to the
boys who were his guests, the evening passed pleasantly away.

Even Bandy-legs seemed to forget his recent troubles part of the time.

Max, seeing him rub various portions of his body tenderly, asked whether
he had really been burned. And when the baffled joker was induced to show