at of a vessel.

One day Alec Gough was able to render her some slight assistance, her
line being obstinately entangled in the snag; but Miss Prosody sternly
brought up the boatman to complete the service, and bowed off the
interloper with such extreme severity, that Bluebell could not resist
bestowing a coquettish and dangerously grateful glance, which set his
heart bumping, and instantaneously obliterated the image of his
sandy-haired little love.

It was too bad of Alec, for he had been engaged a year, and had already
cleared (he was a lumberer) space enough in the backwoods to start a
farm, and he was now on a short visit to his betrothed to report progress
and pursue his suit. So he had no business to get his heart entangled
with the line, and his legitimate affections disengaged with the string
he was clearing, under Circe's azure eyes; and why need he, in that
tactless manner, talk of her at tea as "The Lady of the Lake"? which, if
such a senseless _sobriquet_ was worth having at all, Miss Janet Cameron
considered she had an indisputable right to, for could she not row, swim,
dive, and paddle with the best?

Then again, after tea, he actually stole out in his canoe, muttering
something about "looking for ducks," to which Bernard Lumley gallantly
remarked that he "needn't leave home to find them." He certainly _did_
take a gun, but was also provided with a little flageolet, the companion
of his lonely life in the woods; and waiting till nightfall, by the light
of a waning moon, this absurd and reprehensible young lumberer paddled
himself off to Lyndon's Landing.

There he carefully reconnoitred the house, wondering which could be
Bluebell's casement. The insensible building afforded no hint, so he
pulled out his "howling stick," as Bernard called it, and timorously
breathed forth a lay of love, which certainly must have been first cousin
to the one that encompassed the extinction of the cow.

The inmates were apparently asleep, and Alec, getting bolder, played
every suggestive air he could think of. I don't know whether he expected
Bluebell would open the window and enter into conversation; but, in point
of fact, the lattice under which he was serenading was Mrs. Rolleston's,
who not particularly expecting any lovers, was sleeping the sleep of the
just far too soundly to be disturbed by it.

There being no policeman to direct him to "move on," Alec continued his
dismal repertory till he was tired, and then p