When their week was up, Mr. Langham's guests, Messrs. O'Malley, Alston, and Cox, felt obliged to go where income called them. Renier, however, who had only been at work a year, decided that he did not like his job, and would try for another in the fall. Lee delivered herself of the stern opinion that a rolling stone gathers no moss, and Renier answered that his late uncle had been a fair-to-middling moss gatherer, and that to have more than one such in a given family was a sign of low tastes. "I have a little money of my own," he said darkly, "and, what's more, I have a little hunch." To his face Lee upbraided him for his lack of ambition and his lack of elegance, but behind his back she smiled secretly. She was well pleased with herself. It had only taken him three days to get so that he knew her when he saw her, and for a young man of average intellect and eyesight that was almost a record.
The triplets were not only as like as three lovely vases cast in the same mould but it amusedthem to dress alike, without so much as the differentiation of a ribbon, and to imitate each other's little tricks of speech and gesture. It was even possible for them to fool their own brother at times when he happened to be a little absent-minded.
Every day Renier fished for many hours, and always the guide who handled his boat and showed him where to throw his flies was Lee.
"They're only children," said Mary, "and I think they're getting altogether too chummy."
Arthur did not answer, and for the very good reason that Mary's words were not addressed to him, nor were they addressed to Maud or Eve. Indeed, at the moment, these three were sound asleep in their beds. It was to that plumper and earlier bird, Mr. Samuel Langham, that Mary had spoken. The end of a kitchen table, set with blue-and-white dishes and cups that steamed, fragrantly separated them. They had formed a habit of breakfasting together in the kitchen, and it had not taken Mary long to discover that Sam Langham's good judgment was not confined to eatables and drinkables. She consulted him about all sorts of things. She felt as if she had known him (and trusted him) all her life.
"Renier," he said, "is one of the few reallyeligible young men I know. That is why I asked him up here. I don't mean that my intention was match-making, but when I saw your picture in the advertisement, I said to myself: 'The Inn is no place for attractive scalawags. Any man that goes there on my invitation must be sound, morally and financially.' Young Renier is as innocent of anything evil as Miss Lee herself. If they take a fancy to each other—of course it's none of my business, but, my dear Miss Darling—why not?"
"Coffee?"
"Thanks."
"An egg?"
"Please."
Mary was very tactful. She never said: "Some morecoffee?" She never said: "Anotheregg?"
"Some people," said Mr. Langham, smiling happily, "might say thatwewere getting too chummy."
"Suppose," said Mary, "that somebody did say just that?"
"I should reply," said Mr. Langham thoughtfully, "that of the few really eligible men that I know, I myself am, on the whole, the most eligible."
Mary laughed.
"Construe," she said.
"In the first place," he continued, "and naming my qualifications in the order of their importance, I don't ever remember to have spoken a cross word to anybody; secondly, unless I have paved a primrose path to ultimate indigestion and gout, there is nothing in my past life to warrant mention. To be more explicit, I am not in a position to be troubled by—er—'old agitations of myrtle and roses'; third, something tells me that in a time of supreme need it would be possible for me to go to work; and, fourth, I have plenty of money—really plenty of money."
Mary smiled almost tenderly.
"I can't help feeling," she said, "that I, too, am a safe proposition. I am twenty-nine. My wild oats have never sprouted. I think we may conclude that they were never sown. The Inn was my idea—mostly, though I say it that shouldn't. And The Inn is going to be a success. We could fill every room we've got five times—at our own prices."
"I pronounce your bill of health sound," said Mr. Langham. "Let us continue to be chummy."
"Coffee?"
"Thanks."
Whatever chance there may have been forGay and Pritchard to get "too chummy"—and no one will deny that they had made an excellent start—was promptly knocked in the head by Arthur. It so happened that, in a desperately unguarded moment, when Arthur happened to be present, Pritchard mentioned that he had spent a whole winter in the city of Peking. The name startled Arthur as might the apparition of a ghost.
"Which winter?" he asked. "I mean, what year?"
Pritchard said what year, and added, "Why do you ask?"
Arthur had not meant to ask. He began a long blush, seeing which Gay turned swift heels and escaped upon a suddenly ejaculated pretext.
"Why," said Arthur lamely, "I knew some people who were in Peking that winter—that's all."
"Then," said Pritchard, "we have mutual friends. I knew every foreigner in Peking. There weren't many."
Although Arthur had gotten the better of his blush, he felt that Pritchard was eying him rather narrowly.
"They," said Arthur, "were a Mr. and Mrs. Waring."
"I hope," said Pritchard, "thathewasn't a friend of yours."
"He was not," said Arthur, "but she was. I was very fond of her."
"Nobody," said Pritchard, "could help being fond of her. But Waring was an old brute. One hated him. He wouldn't let her call her soul her own. He was always snubbing her. We used to call her the 'girl with the dry eyes.'"
"Why?" asked Arthur.
"It's a Chinese idea," said Pritchard. "Every woman is supposed to have just so many tears to shed. When these are all gone, why, then, no matter what sorrows come to her, she has no way of relieving them."
Arthur could not conceal his agitation. And Pritchard looked away. He wished to escape. He thought that he could be happier with Gay than with her brother. But Arthur, agitation or no agitation, was determined to find out all that the young Englishman could tell him about the Warings. He began to ask innumerable questions: "What sort of a house did they live in?" "How do Christians amuse themselves in the Chinese capital?" "Did Mrs. Waring ride?" "What were some of her friends like?" etc., etc. There was no escaping him. He fastened himselfto Pritchard as a drowning man to a straw. And his appetite for Peking news became insatiable. Pritchard surrendered gracefully. He went with Arthur on canoe trips and mountain climbs; at night he smoked with him in the open camp. And, in the end, Arthur gave him his whole confidence; so that, much as Pritchard wished to climb mountains and go on canoe trips with Gay, he was touched, interested, and gratified, and then all at once he found himself liking Arthur as much as any man he had ever known.
"There is something wonderfully fine about your brother," he said to Gay. "At first I thought he was a queer stick, with his pets and his secret haunts in the woods, and his unutterable contempt for anything mean or worldly. We ought to dress him up in proof armor and send him forth upon the quest of some grail or other."
"Grails," said Gay, "and auks are extinct."
"Grails extinct!" exclaimed Pritchard. He was horrified.
"Why, my dear Miss Gay, if ever the world offered opportunities to belted knights without fear and without reproach, it's now."
"I suppose," said she, "that Arthur has told you all about his—his mix-up."
Pritchard nodded gravely.
"Is that the quest he ought to ride on?"
"No—it won't do for Arthur. He might be accused of self-interest. That should be a matter to be redressed by a brother knight."
"Or a divorce court."
"Miss Gay!"
"I don't think it's nice for one's brother to be in love with a married woman."
"It isn't," said Pritchard gravely, "for him. It's hell."
"We," said Gay, "never knew her."
"She's not much older than you," said Pritchard. "If I'd never seen you, I'd say that she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But she's gentler and meeker than even you'd be in her boots. She isn't self-reliant and able."
"You talk as if you'd been in love with her yourself."
"I? I thought I was talking as if I was in love with you."
"Looks like it, don't it?" said she. "Spending all your time with a girl's brother."
"Not doing what you most want to do," said Pritchard, "is sometimes thought knightly."
"Do you know," she said critically, "sometimes I think you really like me a lot. And sometimes I think that I really like you. The funnything is that it never seems to happen to both of us at the same time. There's Arthur looking for you. Do me a favor—shake him and come for a tramp with me."
"I can't," said Pritchard simply. "I've promised. But to-morrow——"
"Certainly not," said she.
Warm weather and the real opening of the season arrived at the same time. The Camp hummed with the activities and the voices of people. And it became possible for the Darlings to withdraw a little into their shells and lead more of a family life. As Maud said:
"When there were more proprietors than guests, we simply had to sail in and give the guests a good time. But now that the business is in full blast, we mustn't be amateurs any more."
Langham, Renier, and the future Earl of Merrivale remained, of course, upon their well-established footing of companionship, but the Darlings began to play their parts of innkeepers with the utmost seriousness and to fight shy of any social advances from the ranks of their guests.
Indeed, for the real heads of the family, Mary, Maud, and Eve, there was serious work to be done. For, to keep thirty or forty exigent and extravagant people well fed, well laundered, well served, and well amused is no frisky skirmishbut a morning-to-night battle, a constant looking ahead, a steady drain upon the patience and invention.
In Sam Langham Mary found an invaluable ally. He knew how to live, and could guess to a nicety the "inner man" of another. Nor did he stop at advice. Being a celebratedbon viveurhe went subtly among the guests and praised the machinery of whose completed product they were the consumers and the beneficiaries. He knew of no place, he confided, up and down the whole world, where, for a sum of money, you got exactly what you wanted without asking for it.
"Take me for an example," he would say. "I have never before been able to get along without my valet. Here he would be a superfluity. I am 'done,' you may say, better than I have ever been able to do myself. And I know what I'm talking about. What! You think the prices are really rather high. Think what you are getting, man—think!"
Among the new guests was a young man from Boston by the name of Herring. He had written that he was convalescing from typhoid fever and that his doctor had prescribed Adirondack air.
Renier knew Herring slightly and vouched for him.
"They're good people," he said, "his branch of the Herring family—the 'red Herrings' they are called locally—if we may speak of Boston as a 'locality'—he's the reddest of them and the most showy. If there's anything he hasn't tried, he has to try it. He isn't good at things. But he does them. He's the fellow that went to the Barren Lands with a niblick. What, you never heard of that stunt? He was playing in foursome at Myopia. He got bunkered. He hit the sand a prodigious blow and the ball never moved. His partner said: 'Never mind, Syd, you hit hard enough to kill a musk-ox.'
"'Did I?' said Herring, much interested, 'but I never heard of killing a musk-ox with a niblick. Has it ever been done? Are there any authorities one might consult?'
"His partner assured him that 'it' had never been done. Herring said that was enough for him. The charm of Herring is that he never smiles; he's deadly serious—or pretends to be. When they had holed out at the eighteenth, Herring took his niblick and said: 'Well, so long. I'm off to the Barren Lands.'
"They bet him there and then that he would neither go to the Barren Lands nor kill a musk-ox when he got there. He took their bets, whichwere large. And he went to the Barren Lands, armed only with his niblick and a camera. But he didn't kill a musk-ox. He said they came right up to be photographed, and he hadn't the heart to strike. He brought back plenty enough pictures to prove where he'd been, but no musk-ox. He aimed at one tentatively but at the last moment held his hand. 'He remembered suddenly,' he said, 'that he had never killed anything, and didn't propose to begin.' So he came home and paid one bet and pocketed the other. He can't shoot; he can't fish; he can't row. He's a perfect dub, but he's got the soul of a Columbus."
"Something tells me," said Pritchard, "that I shall like him."
Herring, having arrived and registered and been shown his rooms, was not thereafter seen to speak to anybody for two whole days. As a matter of fact, though, he held some conversation with Renier, whom he had met before.
"It's just Boston," Renier explained. "They're the best people in the world—when—well, not when you get to know them but when they get to know you. Give him time and he will blossom."
"He looks like a blossom already," said Lee. "He looks at a little distance like a giganticplant of scarlet salvia, or a small maple-tree in October."
Upon the third day Mr. Herring came out of his shell, as had been prophesied. He went about asking guests and guides, with almost plaintive seriousness, questions which they were unable to answer. He began to make friends with Pritchard and Langham. He solemnly presented Arthur with a baseball that had figured in a Yale-Harvard game. Then he got himself introduced to Lee.
"You guide, don't you?" he said.
"I have guided," she said, "but I don't. It was only in the beginning of things when there weren't enough real guides to go around. But, surely you don't need a guide. You've been to the Barren Lands and all sorts of wild places. You ought to be a first-class woodsman."
"I thought I'd like to go fishing to-morrow," he said. "It's very disappointing. I've looked forward all my life to being guided by a young girl, and when I saw you, I said, if this isn't she, this is her living image."
"You shall have Bullard," said Lee. "He knows all the best places."
Herring complained to Arthur. "Your sisters," he said, "are said to be the best guides in theAdirondacks, but they won't take me out. How is a fellow to convalesce from typhoid if people aren't unfailingly kind to him?"
Arthur laughed, and said that he didn't know.
"Let me guide you," he offered.
"No," said Herring, "it isn't that I want to be guided. It's that I want the experience of being guided by a girl. I want to lean back and be rowed."
Herring walked in the woods and came upon Phyllis's garden, with Phyllis in the midst of it.
"Halloo again!" he said.
Now it so happened that he had never seen Phyllis before.
She straightened from a frame of baby lettuce and smiled. She loved bright colors, and his flaming hair was becoming to her garden.
"Halloo again!" she said.
"Have you changed your mind?" he asked.
She sparred for time and enlightenment and said:
"It's against all the rules."
"We could," said he, "start so early that nobody would know. I have often gotten up at five."
"So have I," said Phyllis wistfully.
"We could be back before breakfast."
Phyllis appeared to think the matter over.
"Of course," he said, "you said you wouldn't. But if girls didn't change their minds, they wouldn't be girls."
"That," said Phyllis, "is perfectly true."
To herself she said:
"He's asked Lee or Gay to guide him, and thinks he's asked me."
Now, Phyllis was not good with oars or fishing-tackle, but she liked Herring's hair and the fact that he never smiled. Furthermore, she believed that, if the worst came to the worst, she could find some of the places where people sometimes took trout.
"I have never," said Herring, "been guided by a young girl."
"What, never!" exclaimed Phyllis.
"Never," he said. "And I am sure that it would work wonders for me."
"Such as?"
"It might lead me to take an interest in gardening. I have always hoped that I should some day."
"People," thought Phyllis, "interested in gardening are rare—especially beautiful young gentlemen with flaming hair. Here is my chance to slaughter two birds with one stone."
"You'll swear not to tell?" she exhorted.
"Yes," he said, "but not here. Soon. When I am alone." He did not smile.
"Then," she said, "be at the float at five-thirty sharp."
That night she sought out Lee and Gay.
"Such a joke," she said. "I've promised to guide Mr. Herring—to-morrow at five-thirty, but he thinks that it's one of you two who has promised. Now, as I don't row or fish, one of you will have to take my place for the credit of the family."
But her sisters were laughing in their sleeves.
"My dear girl," said Gay, "why the dickens didn't you tell us sooner? We also have made positive engagements at five-thirty to-morrow morning."
"What engagements?" exclaimed Phyllis.
Gay leaned close and whispered confidentially.
"We've made positive engagements," she said, "to sleep till breakfast time."
In an athletic generation Phyllis was an anachronism. She was the sort of girl one's great-grandmother was, only better-looking—one's great-grandmother, if there is any truth in oil and canvas, having been neatly and roundly turned out of a peg of wood. Phyllis played no game well, unless gardening is a game. She liked to embroider and to write long letters in a wonderfully neat hand. She disliked intensely the roaring of firearms and the diabolic flopping of fresh-caught fish. She was one of those people who never look at a sunset or a moonrise or a flower without actually seeing them, and yet, withal, her sisters Lee and Gay looked upon her with a certain awe and respect. She was so strong in the wrists and fingers that she could hold them when they were rambunctious. And she was only afraid of things that aren't in the least dangerous. "No," they said, "she can't fish and shoot and row and play tennis and dive and swim under water, but she's the best dancer in the family—probably in the world—and the best sport."
Phyllis was, in truth, a good sport, or else she was more attracted by Mr. Herring'sSalvia-splendenshair than she would have cared to admit. Whatever the cause, she met him at the float the next morning at five-thirty, prepared to guide him or perish in the attempt. She wore a short blue skirt and a long white sweater of Shetland wool. It weighed about an ounce. She wore white tennis shoes and an immense pair of well-oiled gardening gloves. At least she would put off blistering her hands as long as possible.
Phyllis, to be exact, was five minutes early for her appointment. This gave her time to get a boat into the water without displaying awkwardness to any one but herself—also, to slip the oars over the thole-pins and to accustom herself to the idea of handling them. She had taken coaching the night before from Lee and Gay, sitting on a bearskin rug in front of the fire, and swaying rhythmically forward and back.
As Herring was no fisherman, her sisters advised her to row very slowly. "Tell him," they said, "that a boat rushing through water alarms fish more than anything in the world."
She told him when he was seated in the stern of the boat facing her.
"You mustn't mind going very slow," she said."The fish in this part of the Adirondacks are noted for their sensitiveness in general and their acute sense of hearing in particular. Why, if I were to row as fast as I can"—there must have been a twinkle in her eyes—"trout miles away would be frightened out of their skins," and she added mentally, "and I should upset this horribly wabbly boat into the bargain."
They proceeded at a snail's pace, Phyllis dabbing the water gingerly with her oars, with something of that caution and repulsion with which one turns over a dead snake with a stick—to see if it is dead.
The grips of guide-boat oars overlap. And your hands follow rather than accompany each other from catch to finish, and from finish to catch. If you are careless, or not to the stroke born or trained, you occasionally knock little chunks of skin and flesh from your knuckles.
Herring watched Phyllis's gentle and restrained efforts with inscrutable eyes.
"I never could understand," he said, "how you fellows manage to row at all with that sort of an outfit. At Harvard they only give you one oar and let you take both hands to it, and then you can't row. At least, I couldn't. They put me right out of the boat. They said I caughtcrabs. As a matter of fact, I didn't. All I did was to sit there, and every now and then the handle of my oar banged me across the solar plexus."
"We're not going far, you know," said Phyllis (and she mastered the desire to laugh). "Hadn't you—ah—um—better put your rod together?"
"Oh, I can do that!" said Herring. "You begin with the big piece and you stick the next-sized piece into that, and so on. And I know how to put the reel on, because the man in the store showed me, and I know how to run the line through the rings."
"Well," said Phyllis, "that's more than half the battle."
"And," Herring continued, "he showed me how to tie on the what-you-may-call-it and the flies."
"Good!" said Phyllis.
"And, of course," he concluded, "I've forgotten."
Now, Phyllis had been shown how to tie flies to a leader only the night before, and she, also, had forgotten.
"There are," she said, "a great many fetiches among anglers. Among them are knots. Now, in my experience, almost any knot that will standwill do. The important thing is to choose the right flies."
As to this, she had also received instruction, but with better results, since it was an entirely feminine affair of colored silks and feathers.
"I will tell you which flies to use," she said.
"And," said he, "you will also have to show me how to cast."
"What!" she exclaimed, and stopped rowing, "You don't know how to cast?"
"No," he said, "I don't. I'm a dub. Didn't you know that?"
"But," she protested, "I can't teach you in a morning"—and she added mentally—"or in a whole lifetime, for that matter."
It was not more than a mile across the mouth of a deep bay to the brook in which they had elected to fish. With no wind to object, the most dabbily propelled guide boat travels with considerable speed, and before Herring had managed to tie the flies which Phyllis had selected to his leader (with any kind of a knot) they were among the snaggy shallows of the brook's mouth.
The brook was known locally as Swamp Brook, its shores for a mile or more being boggy and treacherous. Fishermen who liked to land occasionally and cast from terra firma avoided it.Phyllis had selected it solely because it was the nearest brook to the camp which contained trout. If she had remembered how full it was of snags, and how easily guide boats are turned turtle, she would have selected some other brook, even, if necessary, at the "Back of beyond." It had been easy enough to propel the boat across the open waters of the lake, but to guide it clear of snags and around right-angle bends, especially when the genius of rowing demands that eyes look astern rather than ahead, was beyond her powers. The boat ran into snags, poked its nose into boggy banks, turned half over, righted, rushed on, and stopped again with rude bumps.
Herring, that fatalistic young Bostonian, began to take an interest in his fate. His flies trailed in the water behind him. His eyes never left Phyllis's face. His handsome mouth was as near to smiling as it ever got.
"Do you," he said presently, "swim as well as you row?"
She stopped rowing; she laughed right out.
"Just about," she said.
"Good," he said seriously, "because I'm a dub at it, and in case of an upset, I look to you."
"The truth," said Phyllis, "is that there's no place to swim to. It's all swamp in here."
"True," said Herring; "we would have to cling to the boat and call upon Heaven to aid us."
One of Herring's flies, trailing in the water, proved, at this moment, overwhelmingly attractive to a young and unsophisticated trout.
Herring shouted with the triumph of a schoolboy, "I've got one," and sprang to his feet.
"Please sit down!" said Phyllis. "We almost went that time."
"So we did," said Herring.
He sat down, and they almost "went" again.
"Now," said Phyllis, "play him."
"Play him?" said Herring. "Watch me." And he began to pull strongly upon the fish.
The fish was young and weak. Herring's tackle was new and strong. The fish dangled in mid-air over the middle of the boat.
"Sorry," said Herring, "I can't reach him. Take him off, please."
It has been said that Phyllis was a good sport. If there was one thing she hated and feared more than another, it was a live fish. She reached forward; her gloved hand almost closed upon it; it gave a convulsive flop; Phyllis squeaked like a mouse, threw her weight to one side, and the boat quietly upset.
The sportsmen came to the surface streaming.
"I can touch bottom," said Herring politely; "can you?"
"Yes," she said, "but my feet are sinking into it—" She tore them loose and swam. Herring did likewise. And they clung to the boat.
"I hope you'll forgive me," said Phyllis. "I never rowed a boat before and I never could stand live fish."
"It was my fault," said Herring. "Something told me to lean the opposite from the way you leaned. But it told me too late. The truth is I don't know how to behave in a boat. Well, you are still guide. It's up to you."
"What is up to me?"
"A plan of some sort," said he, "to get us out of this."
"Oh, no," she said, "it's up to you."
"My plan," he said, "would be to get back into the boat and row home. It seems feasible, and even easy. But appearances are deceptive. I think I'd rather walk. What has happened here might happen out on the middle of the lake."
"What you don't realize," said Phyllis, "is that we're in the midst of an impassable swamp."
"Impassable?"
"Well, no one's ever crossed it except in winter."
"What—no one!"
He was immensely interested.
"Do you know," he went on confidentially, "the only things that I'm good at are things for which there are no precedents—things that nobody has ever done before. That's why I'm so fond of doing unusual things. Now, you say that this swamp has never been crossed? Enough said. You and I will cross it. Wewilldo it. Are you game?"
"It seems," said Phyllis, "merely a question of when and where we drown. So I'm game. Your teeth are chattering."
"Thank you," said Herring. "But no harm will come to them. They are very strong."
"I hope," said Phyllis, "that when I come out of the water you won't look at me. I shall be a sight."
"A comrade in trouble," said Herring, "is never a sight."
"I am so ashamed," said Phyllis.
"What of?"
"Of being such a fool."
"You're a good sport," said Herring. "That's what you are."
By dint of violent kicking and paddling with their free hands they managed to propel the guide boat from the centre of the brook to afirm-looking clump of reeds and alder roots which formed a tiny peninsula from that shore which was toward The Camp. Covered with slime and mud they dragged themselves out of the water and stood balancing upon the alder roots to recover their breath.
"We must each take an oar," said Herring. "We can make little bridges with them. And we must keep working hard so as to get warm. We shall live to write a brochure about this: 'From Clump to Clump, or Mudfoots in the Adirondacks.'"
Between that clump on which they had found a footing and the next was ten feet of water.
Herring crossed seven feet of it with one heavy jump, fell on his face, caught two handfuls of viburnum stems, and once more dragged himself out of water.
"Now then," he called, "float the oars over to me." And when Phyllis had done this: "Now you come. The main thing in crossing swamps is to keep flat instead of up and down. Jump for it—fall forward—and I'll get your hands!"
Once more they stood side by side precariously balancing.
"The moment," said Herring, "that you begin to feel bored, tell me."
"Why?"
"So that I can encourage you. I will tell you that you are doing something that has never been done before. And that will make you feel fine and dandy. What we are doing is just as hard as finding the North Pole, only there isn't going to be so much of it. Now then, in negotiating this next sheet of water——"
And so they proceeded until the sun was high in the heavens and until it was low.
To attempt the dangerous passage of a swamp when they might have returned to camp in the guide boat was undoubtedly a most imbecile decision. And if Phyllis had not been thoroughly flustered by the upset, which was all her fault, she never would have consented to it. As for Herring's voice in the matter, it was that which the young man always gave when there was a question of adventure. He didn't get around mountains by the valley road. He climbed over them. He had not in his whole being a suspicion of what is dangerous. He had never been afraid of anything. He probably never would be. He would have enjoyed leading half a dozen forlorn hopes every morning before breakfast.
"We were idiots," said Phyllis, "to leave the boat."
"We can't go back to it now," said Herring. "We don't know the way."
"Your voice sounds as if you were glad of it."
"I am. I was dreadfully afraid you'd decideagainst crossing this swamp. I'd set my heart on it."
"It isn't I," said Phyllis, "that's against our crossing this swamp. It's the swamp."
"The main thing," said Herring, with satisfaction (physically he was almost exhausted), "is that here we are safe and sound. We don't know where 'here' is, but it's with us, it won't run away. When we've rested we shall go on, taking 'here' with us. Wherever we go is 'here.' Think of that!"
"I wish I could think of something else," said Phyllis, "but I can't. I'm almost dead."
"You are doing something that no girl has ever done before, not even your sisters, those princesses of fortune. Years from now, when you begin, 'Once when I happened to be crossing the Swamp with a young fellow named Herring—' they will have to sit silent and listen."
"If you weren't so cheerful," said Phyllis, "I should have begun to cry an hour ago. Do you really think this is fun?"
"Do I think it's fun? To be in a scrape—not to know when or how we are going to get out of it? You bet I think it's fun."
"People have died," said Phyllis, "having just this sort of fun. Suppose we can't get out?"
"You mean to-day? Perhaps we can't. Perhaps not to-morrow. Perhaps we shall have to learn how to live in a swamp. A month of the life we've led for the last few hours might turn us into amphibians. That would be intensely novel and interesting. But, of course, when winter comes and the place freezes over we can march right out and take up our orthodox lives where we left off. Listen!"
"What?"
"I think I hear webs growing between my fingers and toes."
Phyllis laughed so that the partially dried mud on her face cracked.
"What," she said, "are we going to eat this side of winter? What are we going to eat now?"
His face expressed immense concern.
"What? You are hungry? Allow me!"
He produced from his inside pocket a very large cake of sweet chocolate, wrapped in several thicknesses of oiled silk.
"My one contribution," he said, "to the science of woodcraft."
Phyllis ate and was refreshed. Afterward she washed all the mud from her face. Herring watched the progress of the ablution with much interest.
"Wonderful!" he said presently.
"What is wonderful?" she asked, not without anticipation of a compliment.
"Wonderful to find that something which is generally accepted as true—is true. To see it proved before your eyes."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," he said, "that I never before actually saw a girl wash her face. I've seen 'em when they said they were going to. I've seen 'em when they said they just had. But now I know."
"If you weren't quite mad," said Phyllis, "you'd be very exasperating. Here am I, frightened half to death, cold and miserable, and dreadfully worried to think how worried my family must be, and there are you, almost too tired to stand, actually delighted with yourself, because you're in trouble and because for the first time in your life you've seen a girl wash her face. Can't you be serious about anything?"
"Not about a half-drowned girl taking the trouble to wash her face," he said.
"You," said she, "would look much better if you washed yours."
"But," he said, "we'll be covered with mud again before we've gone fifty yards."
"Because you are going into a coal mine to-morrow,"said Phyllis, "is no reason why you shouldn't be clean to-day."
"True," said Herring, and he washed his face.
At breakfast that morning Pritchard received the following cablegram:
Come home and shake hands. I'm off. M.
Greatly moved, he carried it to Gay, and without comment put it in her hand.
"Who is M?" she asked.
"My uncle, the Earl of Merrivale."
"What doesI'm offmean?"
"It means," said Pritchard, "that they've given him up, and he wants to make friends. He never liked my father or me."
"It means," said Gay generously, "that you are going away?"
"Yes," he said, "at once. But it means more. It means that I've got to find out if I'm—to come back some time?"
"Of course, you are to come back," she said.
Words rose swiftly to Pritchard's lips and came no further. Indeed, he appeared to swallow them.
"And I'm glad you are going to make friends with your uncle," said Gay.
"There'll be such lots of young men here when the season opens," said Pritchard.
"Judging by applications," said Gay, "we shall be swamped with gentlemen of all ages."
Pritchard's melancholy only deepened. "Will you come as far as Carrytown in theStreak?" he asked.
She nodded, and said she would because she had some shopping to do.
During that short, exhilarating rush across the lake, and afterward walking up and down on the board platform by the side of the waiting train, he tried his best to ring a little sentiment out of her, but failed utterly.
The locomotive whistled, and the conductor came out of the village drug-store, staggering slightly.
"I've left all my dry-fly tackle," said Pritchard. "Willyoutake care of it for me?"
"With pleasure," said Gay.
"I'd like you to use it. It's a lovely rod to throw line."
"All aboard!"
"I'd like to bring you out some rods and things. May I?"
"You bet you may!" exclaimed Gay.
Pritchard sighed. The train creaked, jolted, moved forward, stopped, jerked, and moved forward again. Pritchard waited until the rear steps of the rear car were about to pass.
"Good-by, Miss Gay!"
They shook hands firmly, and Pritchard swung himself onto the moving train. Gay, walking rapidly and presently breaking into a trot, accompanied him as far as the end of the platform. She wanted to say something that would please him very much without encouraging him too much.
"Looks as if I was after you!" she said.
Pritchard's whole soul was in his eyes. And there was a large lump in his throat. Suddenly Gay reached the end of the long platform and stopped running. The train was now going quite fast for an Adirondack train. The distance between them widened rapidly.
"Wish you weren't going," called Gay.
And she saw Pritchard reach suddenly upward and pull the rope by which trains are stopped in emergencies. While the train was stopping and the train hands were trying to find out who had stopped it and why, Pritchard calmly alighted, and returned to where Gay was standing.
"I just had to look at you once more—close," he said; "you never can tell what will happen in this world. I may never see you again, and the thought is killing me. Think of that once in a while, please."
He bent swiftly, caught her hand in his, kissed it, and was gone. Or, if not exactly gone, she saw him no more, because of suddenly blinding tears.
When she reached The Camp, Arthur was at the float to meet her.
"Phyllis and Herring haven't come back," he said. "Lee says they went fishing. Do you know where they went?"
"I don't. And they ought to have been back hours ago."
"Yes," said Arthur, "and we're all starting out to look for them. Care to come with me?"
"Yes," she said; "I've got to dosomething."
Something in her voice took his mind from the more imminent matter.
"What's wrong, Gay?"
She shook her head.
"Nothing. Let's start. If Phyl rowed, they must have gone to the nearest possible fishing grounds."
At this moment Sam Langham came puffingdown from Cook House. He was dressed in white flannels and carried a revolver.
"It's to signal with," he explained. "I'm going to try Loon Brook, because it's the only brook I know when I see it."
"Bullard's gone to Loon Brook."
"Pshaw—can't I ever be of any use!"
"Good Lord," said Gay, "look!"
There came around the nearest bend a man rowing one guide boat and towing another, which was empty. Arthur called to him in a loud, hoarse voice:
"Where'd you find that boat?"
"Up Swamp Brook," came the answer.
Arthur and Gay went gray as ashes.
"Who's to tell Mary?" said Arthur presently.
Then Sam Langham spoke.
"If you don't mind," he said, "I think I will."
An hour later the entire male population of The Camp was dragging Swamp Brook for what they so dreaded to find.
It wasn't all discouragement. For now and then it seemed as if the swamp was going to have a shore of dry land. At such times Herring would exclaim:
"There you see! It had never been done before, and now it's been done, and we've done it."
And then it would seem to Phyllis as if a great weight of fear and anxiety had been lifted from her.
But the shore of the swamp always turned out to be an illusion. Once Herring, firmly situated as he believed, went suddenly through a crust of sphagnum moss and was immersed to the arm-pits. For some moments he struggled grimly to extricate himself, and only sank the deeper. Then he turned to Phyllis a face whimsical in spite of its gravity and pallor, and said: "If you have never saved a man's life, now is your chance. I'm afraid I can't get out without help."
It was then that her phenomenally strong little hands and wrists stood them both in good stead. The arches of her feet against a submergedroot of white cedar, she so pulled and tugged, and exhorted Herring to struggle free, that at last he came out of that pocket quagmire and lay exhausted in the ooze at her feet.
He was incased from neck to foot in a smooth coating of brown slime. Presently he rolled over on his back and looked up at her.
"There you see!" he said. "You'd never saved a man's life before, and now you've done it. Please accept my sincere expressions of envy and gratitude— Why, you're crying!"
She was not only crying, but she was showing symptoms of incipient hysteria. "An old-fashioned girl," thought Herring, "like Great-grandmother Saltonstall." He raised himself to a sitting position just in time to slide an arm around her waist as, the hysteria now well under way, she sat down beside him and began to wave her hands up and down like a polite baby saying good-by to some one.
"One new thing under the sun after another," thought Herring. "Never had arm round hysterical girl's waist before. Got it there now. When you needher, she takes a good brace and pulls for all she's worth. When she needsyou, she seats herself on six inches of water and yells. Just like Great-grandmother Saltonstall." Aloudhe kept saying: "That's right! Greatest relief in the world! Go to it!" And his arm tightened about her with extraordinary tenderness.
Her hysterics ended as suddenly as they had begun. And then she wasted a valuable half-hour apologizing for having had them; Herring protesting all the while that he had enjoyed them just as much as she had, and that they had done him a world of good. And then they had to stop talking because their teeth began to chatter so hard that they simply couldn't keep on. Herring stuttered something about, "Exercise is what a body needs," and they rose to their feet and fought their way through a dense grove of arbor-vitæ.
"The stealthy Indian goes through such places without making a sound," said Herring.
"Or getting his moccasins wet," said Phyllis. "Oh!" And she sank to the waist.
"Never mind," said Herring, "it will be dark before long. And when we have no choice of where to step, maybe we'll have better luck."
"It willhaveto be dark very soon," said Phyllis, "if we have any more of our clothes taken away from us by the brambles."
"That's a new idea!" exclaimed Herring."Young couple starve to death in the woods because modesty forbids them to join their friends in the open. The head-line might be: 'Stripped by Brambles,' or 'The Two Bares.'"
He was so pleased with his joke that he had to lean against a tree. The laughing set him to coughing, and Phyllis beat him methodically between the shoulders.
Herring still refused to be serious. In helping Phyllis over the bad places, he performed prodigies of misapplied strength and made prodigious puns. And he said that never in his life had he been in such a delightful scrape.
Once, while they were resting, Phyllis said:
"All you seem to think of is the fun you're having. Most men would be thinking about the anxiety they were causing others and about the miseries of their companion."
"But," he protested, "you are enjoying yourself too. You don't think you are, but you are. It's your philosophy that is wrong. You like to live too much in the present. I like to lay by stores of delightful memories against rainy days. The worse you feel now, the more you'll enjoy remembering how you felt—some evening, soon—your back against soft cushions and the soles of your feet toward the fire."
"Ugh!" shuddered Phyllis. "Don't talk about fires. Oh, dear!"
"What's wrongnow!"
"I'm so stiff I don't think I can take another step. We oughtn't to have rested so long."
But she did take another step, and would have fallen heavily if Herring had not caught her. A moment later she lost a shoe in the ooze, and wasted much precious daylight in vain efforts to locate and recover it.
"Sit down on that root," commanded Herring. And she obeyed. He knelt before her, lifted her wet, muddy little stockinged foot and set it on his knee.
"What size, please, miss?" he asked, giving an excellent imitation of a somewhat officious salesman.
"I don't know; I have them made," said Phyllis wearily, but trying her best to smile.
"Something in this style?" suggested Herring. He had secretly removed one of his own shoes, and handling it with a kind of comic reverence, as if the soggy, muddy thing was a precious work of art, he presented it to her attention.
And then Phyllis smiled without even trying and then laughed.
"I said ashoe," she said, "not a travelling bath-tub."
But he slipped that great shoe over her little foot, and so bound it to her ankle with his handkerchief and necktie that it promised to stay on.
"But you?" she said.
"Luck is with me to-day," said Herring. "Anybody can walk through an impassable swamp, but few are given the opportunity to hop. General Sherman should have thought of that. It would have showed the Confederates just what he thought of them if instead of marching through Georgia he had hopped."
And he pursued this new train of thought for some time. He improvised words to old tunes, and sang them at the top of his lungs: "As we were hopping through Georgia." And last and worst he sang: "There'll be a hop time in the old town to-night." And when he had occasion to address Phyllis directly, he no longer called her Miss Darling, but "Goody Two Shoes." He said that his own name was not Mr. Herring but Mr. Hopper, and that he was a famous cotillon leader.
But even he became a little quiet when the light began to fail, and a little serious.
"Whatever happens," he said, "it will be a great comfort to you to realize that it's entirelymy fault. On the other hand, if we had gotten back into that boat, we might have been drowned long before this."
A little later Phyllis said: "I'm about all in. It's too dark to see. I——"
"Couldn't have chosen a better camping site myself," said Herring humbly. "First thing to think of is the water-supply—and fuel. Now, here the fuel grows right out of the water——"
"We haven't any matches."
"Yes, we have; but they are wet and won't light."
"We'll die of cold before morning," said Phyllis; "there's no use pretending we won't."
"On the contrary. Now is the time to pretend all sorts of things. Did you ever try to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together?"
"Never."
"Well, try it. It will make you warmer than the fire would. Afterward we will play 'Paddy cake, Paddy cake,' and 'Bean Porridge hot.'"
"Do men in danger always carry on the way you do?" asked Phyllis.
"Always," he answered.
"I can understand trying to be funny during a cavalry charge, or while falling off a cliff," said Phyllis, "but not while slowly and miserably congealing."
"You are not a Bostonian," said Herring. "Half the inhabitants of that municipality freeze to death and the others burn."
"I've stayed in Boston," said Phyllis, "and the only difference that I could see between it and other places was that the people were more agreeable and things were done in better taste. And what gardens!"
"Ever seen the Arboretum?"
"Have I?"
"In lilac time?"
"Mm!"
She was on her favorite topic. She forgot that she was cold, wet, miserable, and a frightful anxiety to her family.
"But why be an innkeeper?" asked Herring. "Why not set up as a landscape-gardener?"
"I don't know enough. But I've often thought——"
"I've got five hundred acres outside of Boston that I'd like to turn you loose on."
"You speak as if I were a goat."
"The first thing to do is to drain the swamps. Now, I'll make you a proposition. I can't put it in writing, because it's too dark to see and I have no writing materials, but there is nothing fishy about us Herrings. You to landscape my placefor me, cause a suitable house to be built, and so forth; I to pay you a thousand dollars a month, and a five per cent commission on the total expenditure."
"And what mightthatamount to?"
"What you please," said Herring politely.
"Who says Bostonians are cold?" exclaimed Phyllis. And there began to float through her head lovely visions of landscapes of her own making.
"You're still joking, aren't you?" she said after a while.
"I don't know landscapes well enough to joke about them," he said.
"But I can't design a house!"
"Oh, you will have architects to do that part. You just pick the general type."
"What kind of a house do you want?"
"It depends on what kind of a houseyouwant."
"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "what fun it would be!"
"Will you do it?"
She was tempted beyond her strength.
"Yes," she said, and began to talk with irresponsible delight and enthusiasm.
"Ah," thought Herring to himself, "find out what really interests a girl and she'll forget all her troubles."
It began suddenly to grow light.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Phyllis. "The woods must be on fire! Oh, the poor trees!"
"It isn't fire," said Herring, "it's the moon—'Queen and huntress, chaste and fair—goddess excellently bright'—was ever such luck! I hoped we were going to stand here cosily all night talking about marigolds and cowslips and wallpapers, and now it's our duty to move on. Come, Goody Two Shoes, Policeman Moon has told us to move on. I shall never forget this spot. And I shan't ever be able to find it again."
They toiled forward a little way, and lo! upon a sudden, they came to firm and rocky land that sloped abruptly upward from the swamp. They climbed for several hundred feet and came out upon a bare hilltop, from which could be seen billows of forest and one great horn of Half Moon Lake, silver in the moonlight.
"Why, it isn't a mile to camp," said Phyllis. She swayed a little, tottered, rocked backward and then forward, and fell against Herring's breast in a dead faint.
In a few moments she came to and found that she was being carried in strong arms. It was a novel, delicious, and restful sensation—one which it seemed immensely sensible toprolong. She did not, then, immediately open her eyes.
She heard a voice cheerful, but very much out of breath, murmuring over her:
"New experience. Never carried girl before. Experience worth repeating. Like 'em old-fashioned—like Great-grandmother Saltonstall. Like 'em to faint."
A few minutes later, "Where am I?" said Phyllis.
"In my arms," said Herring phlegmatically, as if that was one of her habitual residing places.
"Put me down, please."
"I hear," said he, "and I obey with extreme reluctance. I made a bet with myself that I could carry you all the way. And now I shall never know. Feel better?"
"Mm," she said, and "What a nuisance I've been all through! But it was pretty bad, some of it, wasn't it?"
"Already you are beginning to take pleasure in remembering. What did I tell you? Don't be frightened. I am going to shout."
He shouted in a voice of thunder, and before the echo came back to them another voice, loud and excited, rose in the forest. And they heard smashings and crashings, as a wild bull tearingthrough brittle bushes. And presently Sam Langham burst out of the thicket with a shower of twigs and pine-needles.
His delight was not to be measured in words. He apostrophized himself.
"Good old Sam!" he said. "He knew you weren't drowned in the brook. He knew it would be just like Herring to want to cross that swamp. As soon as I heard somebody say that it was impassable, I said: 'Where is the other side? That's the place to look for them.' But why didn't you make more noise?"
"Oh," said Herring, "we were so busy talking and exploring and doing things that had never been done before that it never occurred to us to shout."
"Herring," said Langham sternly, "you have the makings of a hero, but not, I am afraid, of a woodsman."
"Well, we're safe enough now," said Herring. "Excuse me a moment——"
"Excuse you! What?"
"It's very silly—been sick you know—over-exertion—think better faint and get it over with."
Langham knelt and lifted Herring's head.
"You lift his feet," he said to Phyllis, "send the blood to his heart; bring him to."
Herring began to come out of his faint.
"This young man," said Langham, "may be something of an ass, but he's got sand."
"He carried me a long way," said Phyllis, the tears racing down her cheeks; "and he's only just over typhoid, and he never stopped being cheerful and gallant, and heisn'tan ass!"
Herring came to, but was not able to stand. He had kept up as long as he had to, and now there was no more strength in him.
Phyllis accepted the loan of Langham's coat.
"I'll stay with him," she said, "while you go for help."
The moment Langham's back was turned she spread the coat over Herring.
"Please—don't!" he said.
"You be quiet," said she sharply. "How do you feel?"
"Pretty well used up, thank you. Hope you'll 'scuse me for this collapse. Shan't happen again. Lucky thing you and I don't both collapse same moment."
A faint moan was wrung from him. She touched his cheek with her hand. It was hot as fire. She was an old-fashioned girl, and the instinct of nursing was strong in her.
She was an old-fashioned girl. There hadalmost always been a young man in her life about whom, for a while, she wove more or less intensely romantic fancies. They came; they went. But almost always there was one.
She raised her lovely face and looked at the moon, and made an unspoken confession. There had always been one. Well, now there was another!