So Mr.
Deblois said, 'Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as much
yours as ours; help yourselves; but we shall not invite you to drink
spirits.'
"We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of our own to eat, and had
no relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for water. Mr. Little had
been there before, and directed us to a spring of the best of water,
that boiled up like a pot from the ground, just at the margin of the
bog.
"Before starting to return, the bet between Enoeh and myself had to be
settled. By its conditions, the one who caught the largest number of
fish was to have all the hooks and lines of the other. I counted my
string and found twenty-five. Enoch made twenty-six on his; so I was
about turning over the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string was
the largest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and made
twenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted again, and
found it was as he said, and Enoch prepared to pay the bet, when Mr.
Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's string was certainly larger
than mine, and proposed to count again. This time I had but twenty-four,
and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men counted them several times over,
until we could not tell which was which, and they never came out twice
alike.
"At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, 'Stop this, Sawyer, you have
turned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling us all.' The men
laughed heartily, and so should I if I had known what the point of the
joke was.
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