he comes forward.

"How are you, Harlson?"

"This is Mrs. Harlson." The ceremony takes place. "Now, Jack, here's
a grave matter of business. Have you a private room? And I want you
to send in a lot of light wading-boots--the smallest sizes. And I want
some other things." And the list is given.

And the lady and gentleman disappear into a small room assigned them,
and a lot of wading-boots are taken in, and time elapses. And,
eventually, lady and gentleman emerge again, the man's eyes full of
laughter, and the woman's eyes full of laughter and confusion, and a
package is made up.

"Send it to my house, Jack," says the man, and the couple leave the
place.

CHAPTER XXV.

MATURE AGAIN.

Michigan is divided into two peninsulas, the apexes of which meet.

The State is shaped like an hour-glass, with the upper portion twisted
to the left. About all the two peninsulas lie blue waters, the inland
seas, lakes Michigan, Superior and Huron. Upon the upper peninsula are
great mineral ranges, copper and iron, a stunted but sturdy forest
growth, and hundreds of little lakelets. The lower peninsula, at its
apex, is yet largely unclaimed from nature, but, toward the south,
broadens out into the great area of grain and apple blossoms, and big,
natty towns, once the country of oak openings, the haunt of Pontiac and
of Tecumseh, braided and crossed by one of Cooper's romances.

It is with the crest of the lower peninsula that this description
deals. There exist not the rigors of the northern peninsula; there the
timber has not tempted woodland plunderers, nor have dried brook-beds
followed shorn forests, nor the farmer invaded the region of light
soil. There is the dense but stunted growth of the hard maple and pine
and beech and fir, and there are windfalls and slashes which sometimes
bridge the creeks. There are still black ash swales and dry beech
ridges, but they are not as massive as further south. There are still
the haunting deer and the black bear and the ruffed grouse, the
"partridge" in the idiom of the country, the "pheasant" of the South
and Southwest. There are scores of tiny lakes, deep and pure and
tenanted, and babbling streams, and there are the knighted speckled
trout, the viking black bass and that rakish aristocrat, the grayling.

One way to cross from Michigan to Huron is in a canoe, threading one's
way from woodland lake to woodland lake, through brush-hidden
brooklets, without a por