uiet air, while the note of the reveille clangored from the little
buglette of the Norseman. Jimmie and the big Scotch backwoodsman swayed
their bodies in one boat, while the two sinister voyagers dipped their
paddles in the big canoe.

The Norseman's gorge came up, and he yelled back: "Say! this suits me. I
am never going back to New York."

Jimmie grinned at the noise; it made him happy. Such a morning, such a
water, such a lack of anything to disturb one's peace! Let man's better
nature revel in the beauties of existence; they inflate his soul. The
colors play upon the senses--the reddish-yellow of the birch-barks, the
blue of the water, and the silver sheen as it parts at the bows of the
canoes; the dark evergreens, the steely rocks with their lichens, the
white trunks of the birches, their fluffy tops so greeny green, and over
all the gold of a sunny day. It is my religion, this thing, and I do not
know how to tell all I feel concerning it.

The rods were taken out, a gang of flies put on and trolled behind--but
we have all seen a man fight a five-pound bass for twenty minutes. The
waters fairly swarmed with them, and we could always get enough for the
"pot" in a half-hour's fishing at any time during the trip. The Abwees
were canoeing, not hunting or fishing; though, in truth, they did not
need to hunt spruce-partridge or fish for bass in any sporting sense;
they simply went out after them, and never stayed over half an hour. On
a point we stopped for lunch: the Scotchman always struck the beach
a-cooking. He had a "kit," which was a big camp-pail, and inside of it
were more dishes than are to be found in some hotels. He broiled the
bacon, instead of frying it, and thus we were saved the terrors of
indigestion. He had many luxuries in his commissary, among them dried
apples, with which he filled a camp-pail one day and put them on to
boil. They subsequently got to be about a foot deep all over the camp,
while Furguson stood around and regarded the black-magic of the thing
with overpowering emotions and Homeric tongue. Furguson was a good
genius, big and gentle, and a woodsman root and branch. The Abwees had
intended their days in the wilderness to be happy singing flights of
time, but with grease and paste in one's stomach what may not befall the
mind when it is bent on nature's doings?

[Illustration: 44 DOWN THE RIVER ON A GOLDEN MORNING]

And thus it was that the gloomy Indian Jimmie Friday, despite his
tu