th of my stroke, and
began to come out of my stupor. Some time later, I happened to look
behind me. _The tree in question was about three hundred yards ahead of
the boat!_ I had been rowing up-stream for at least a half-hour in a
strenuous race with that tree! The Kid, aroused by my laughter, asked
sleepily what in thunder tickled me. I told him I had merely thought of
a funny story; whereat he mumbled some unintelligble anathema, and
lapsed again into a snoring state. But I claim the distinction of being
the only man on record who ever raced a half-hour with a tree, and
finished three city blocks to the bad!

The next day we rounded the great loop, in which the river makes a
detour of thirty miles. Having rowed the greater part of the day, we
found ourselves in the evening only two or three miles from a point we
had reached in the morning.

In a drizzling rain we passed Brule Agency. In the evening, soppy and
chilled, we were pulling past a tumble-down shanty built under the
bluffs, when a man stepped from the door and hailed us. We pulled in.
"You fellers looks like you needed a drink of booze," said the man as we
stepped ashore. "Well, I got it for sale, and it ain't no harm to
advertise!"

This strenuous liquor merchant bore about him all the wretched marks of
the stuff he sold.

"Have your wife cook us two meals," said I, "and I'll deal with you."

"Jump in my boat," said he. I got in his skiff, wondering what his whim
might mean. After several strokes of the oars, he pulled a flask from
his pocket, took my coin and rowed back to shore. "Government license,"
he explained; "got to sell thirty feet from the bank." "Poor old
Government," thought I; "they beat you wherever they deal with you!"

We went up to the wretched shanty, built of driftwood, and entered. The
interior was a melee of washtubs, rickety chairs, babies, and flies. The
woman of the house hung out a ragged smile upon her puckered mouth,
etched at the lips with many thin lines of worry, and aped hospitality
in a manner at once pathetic and ridiculous. A little girl, who looked
fifty or five, according to how you observed her, dexterously dodged the
drip from the cracks in the roof, as she backed away into a corner, from
whence she regarded us with eyes already saddened with the ache of life.

After many days and nights in the great open, fraternizing with the
stars and the moon and the sun and the river, it gave me a heartache to
have the old bi