e for loitering.

The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were
covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.

Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the
earth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at their
summit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from
every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a
lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if
it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure
would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a
vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so
haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.

The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from
his listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws
in the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all in
white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant
exhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past
Adam.

"What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.

"Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."

"You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using the
double Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."

Adam thought of her when she was _not_ on the lookout. He also thought
of her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as he
pulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.

"I'll go in presently," he muttered.

"Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving the
upward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks a
repetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.

"I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."

"Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too close
to the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke has
overcome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"

"The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting his
position impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graat
dail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."

Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:

"Well, _au revoir_. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. It
will be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not wind
enough to lif