nts handily.

It was a merry party which gathered about the table which had been
spread under the trees near the club house. Oak Cliff is the only club
which Woodvale recognises as a rival, and the Wilson's entertained us
charmingly. Mr. Harding was in great spirits.

"I won!" he announced as he returned with our elongated and smiling
host. "Licked Wilson, trifoliums and all, right here on his own ground!
But he found a _Rumex_ and a lot of other weeds, so he don't care."

Miss Harding and I had discovered an oil painting in the club library
which interested us, and when coffee and cigars had been served I asked
Mr. Wilson about its history.

"Robinson gave it to the club," he said, "he can tell its story better
than I can."

"It's an odd sort of a yarn," began Robinson. "Last fall an artist
friend of mine of the name of Powers wrote a letter inviting me to come
and spend a few weeks with him in a camp he had established on the upper
waters of the Outrades River in northeastern Quebec. He was there
sketching and loafing, and I took my golf clubs and went. While he
painted I batted balls around a cleared space in the forest, fished,
hunted and had so much fun that we stayed there until cold weather set
in. Then we loaded up a boat and started down the river with a guide."

"One evening we came to an island with rapids below it. We had to
portage around these rapids, so we decided to camp for the night. It was
cold, and rapidly growing colder, but Powers insisted in making a trip
to that island, the beauty of its rocks fascinating his artistic soul.
We emptied the boat and he pulled across the swift current. Ten minutes
later we heard him yell. His boat had drifted from where he thought he
had moored it, and had been dashed to pieces in the rapids below. The
guide declared that there was no way to reach him without a boat, and
that he would have to go back twenty miles to a lumber camp for one. We
explained this to Powers, and told him to light a fire and make the best
of it until morning. The current was so swift that no swimmer could
breast it. It was already down to zero."

[Illustration: "Had ignited the matches"]

"Powers searched his pockets," continued Robinson, "and made the
startling announcement that he did not have a match. Without a fire he
surely would freeze before the guide could return. He was dancing up and
down on a rock and swinging his arms to keep warm."

"He certainly was in a bad fix," int