Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/263

 rods into their cases; after which he walked around the canvas canoe and gave it a good looking over. Tom Bigden had told him that if he didn't want to carry the canoe on his back, he could take it to pieces and carry it in his hand as he would a gripsack; but the trouble was, Matt did not know how to go to work to take it apart. Every thing fitted snugly, and he could not find any place to begin. The only parts of it that he could move were the bottom boards; and when he had taken them out, the frame-work of the canoe was as solid as ever. He spent a quarter of a hour in unavailing efforts to start something, and then giving it up as a task beyond his powers, he decided that the only thing he could do was to carry it as he would carry any other canoe. A less experienced man would have shrunk from the undertaking. It was fully twenty miles to the river which connected the two lakes, and the course lay through a dense forest where there was not even the semblance of a path. But there was no other way to get the canoe to Indian Lake.

Meanwhile, Matt's wife and boys had worked