ws all abaout
it."

Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a
country village is inspector-general of all that goes on out-of-doors,
being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the habits and
habitats of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of observation, just as
dealing in horses is an education of certain faculties, and breeds a race
of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious, wary, and wide awake, with a
rhetoric of appreciation and depreciation all its own.

Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the
following effect:

"Wahl, I don' know jest what to say. I've seed 'em both often enough
when they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout
neither on 'em. But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em
stretched in a straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout 'f a
mile 'n' a haaf. I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them fellers is
naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the time they git
raound the stake 'n' over agin the big ellum. I'll go ye a quarter on
the pahnts agin the petticoats."

The fresh-water fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that the
young ladies were overmatched. Still there were not wanting those who
thought the advantage allowed the "Lantas," as they called the Corinna
boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible for the "Quins"
to make it up and go by them.

The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators. They
appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine, mettlesome as
colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen, disciplined to
work together as symmetrically as a single sculler pulls his pair of
oars. The fisherman offered to make his quarter fifty cents. No takers.

Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking for
the Atalanta. A clump of trees hid the edge of the lake along which the
Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point. Presently the
long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers, who, with their
ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as Raphael fills his
skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee. But how steadily the Atalanta
came on!---no rocking, no splashing, no apparent strain; the bow oar
turning to look ahead every now and then, and watching her course, which
seemed to be straight as an arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and
regular as the pulse of