lness of the place were the clickings of a single
telegraph instrument in the station and the scoffing voices of a few
crows, circling about the tops of some pine trees that overlooked the
farmhouse.

The prospect that met the eyes of the boys was most enticing. On one
hand lay the little pond, reflecting some great patches of cloud that
flecked the sky. All about them, as far as eye could discern, stretched
the country, rolling and irregular, meadow and pasture, corn and wheat
land, and groves of maple, pine and birch.

Flowing into the pond, a thin, shadowy stream wound its way through
alders and rushes, coming down along past Spencer's, invitingly from the
fields and hills. It was the principal inlet of the pond, flowing hence
from another and larger pond some miles to the westward.

"Well, Henry, what do you say?" said the larger boy. "Looks great,
doesn't it?"

"Ripping, Jack!" exclaimed the other. "I feel like paddling a mile a
minute. Let's pick her up and get afloat."

They reached for the "her" referred to--the light canoe--when the
station agent, welcoming even this trifling relief from the monotony of
Spencer's, approached them.

"That's a right nice craft of yours," he remarked, eying it curiously.
"Going on the pond?"

"No, we're going around through the streams to Benton," replied the
elder boy. "Think there's water enough to float us?"

"Why, p'raps," said the station agent. "It's a long jaunt,
though--twenty-five or thirty miles, I reckon. Calc'late to do it in one
day?"

"Why, yes, and home in time for a late supper. We didn't think it was
quite so far as that, though. How far do you call it to the brook that
leads over into Dark Stream?"

"Oh, two or three miles--ask Spencer. He knows more'n I do 'bout it."

Spencer, a deliberate, sleepily-inclined individual, much preoccupied
with a jack-knife and a shingle, "allowed" the distance to be a matter
of from a mile and a half, to two miles, or "mebbe" two and a half.

"Henry Burns, old chap, get hold of that canoe and let's scoot,"
exclaimed his companion, laughing. "Tom and Bob said 'twas a mile.
Probably everyone we'd ask would say something different. If we keep on
asking questions, we'll go wrong, sure."

Henry Burns's response was to pick up his end of the canoe, and they
went cautiously down through the tangle of grasses to the stream. The
buoyant craft rested lightly on its surface; they stepped aboard, Henry
Burns in the bow, his c