The Amateur Guide

By THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

ILLIAM KENT knew the Upper Oxbow country more thoroughly than did many of the natives. He had spent four summers and autumns and one winter in that vast and unspoiled wilderness which lies between those two outposts of civilisation—the sawmill village of Lime Rock and the sawmill village of Howleyburg. As the crow flies, or the bee, it is something better than one hundred miles between these enterprising settlements. The journey, as a few men have made it, takes one up to the source of Upper Oxbow, which is in Squaw Lake, from lake to lake, then over the height of land by a three-mile carry to Frenchman's Lake on the other side, and from there into the shallow head-waters of Salmon River, and so down Salmon River to Howleyburg. Made in this way, the journey is one of nearer one hundred and fifty miles than one hundred. It is all in favour of the crow and the bee.

Kent made what he was pleased to consider a modest income by illustrating magazines and books. He had also painted a few large canvases of wood and water scenes, which up to this time had failed to catch the public fancy.

Kent was moving down by easy stages to Lime Rock. He was clear of eye and hard of muscle, and eager for the winter's work in New York. He was now encamped on the Lower Oxbow, five miles above Lime Rock and just across the river from Dave Carson's shack. Early on the morning of the sixteenth of September he looked out of his tent and beheld Dave's wife crossing the river in a canoe.

"I suppose she wants to borrow some more baking-powder," he grumbled, crawling forth from the tent and folding his robe of heavy blanketing tightly about his lean figure. There was frost on the ground, so he slipped his bare feet into a pair of moccasins. He sighed, wishing that the woman had postponed her visit until after he had taken his customary plunge in the river. In a disgruntled frame of mind he took up his axe and commenced splitting kindlings.

When Mrs. Carson came ashore, Kent greeted her politely, but not quite as cordially as usual. The postponement of his bath fretted him. He dropped his axe, however, and asked what he could do for her. She was a middle-aged woman who looked as if she had never been pretty. Her eyes were anxious, and just now the expression of her whole face was more than usually apprehensive and careworn.

"Dave's took terrible bad with his rheumatis, an' ain't able to move off his back," she said, "an' he don't see how he's goin' to meet them sports at Lime Rock to-day, nohow. He thought as how ye'd maybe obleege him, Mr. Kent, an' go down for them to-day an' bring them up this far; an' maybe he'd be feelin' able to take holt of them to-morrow. It's a two weeks' trip they're figgerin' on, an' Dave don't wanter lose the money. Will ye do it, Mr. Kent?"

Kent looked embarrassed. He was an obliging young man by nature, and it pained him to have to refuse to do anyone a favour; but, on the other hand, he was shy with strangers, and, having once encountered a very unsportsmanlike specimen of "sport" on this very river, he had ever since avoided all fishermen and moose-hunters from the cities.

"But—ah, Mrs. Carson—I'm not a guide, you see, and I don't know these people," he stammered.

"Dimsdale's the gent's name," said the woman quickly. "T'other's his daughter. He's worth millions of money, Dave says. I can't figger out how we'll git through the winter if some other guide gits holt of them."

Kent looked suddenly keenly interested and less embarrassed.

"Dimsdale?" he queried. "What Dimsdale? Where's he from?"

"Alexander P. Dimsdale's how he wrote his name to Dave, an' he's from New York," replied Mrs. Carson. "Maybe ye're acquainted with him, Mr. Kent? Now, I wouldn't be a mite surprised if ye was to tell me as ye was. Ye're acquainted with a sight of them rich folks, I cal'late!"

William Kent turned away from the woman.

"I'm acquainted only with a portion of his history," he said.

"It would be real nice for ye to meet him, then, an' his girl, an' it would sure be a great favour to Dave an' me," she replied.

Kent paced slowly away from her for a distance of ten yards or so, turned, and came slowly back. He looked thoughtful, but otherwise the woman noticed nothing worthy of remark in the expression of his face. She was not observant.

"I'll do it," he said quietly. "I'll go across now and have a word with Dave."

Twenty minutes later Kent and Mrs. Carson entered the Carson cabin. They found Dave flat on his back, groaning with the ache of his rheumatics and that bereft feeling inspired by fear of financial loss. Money was a very real thing to Dave. He was always happy when he bad it, and miserable when without it; and it always flew from his fingers, dollar by dollar, like chips from the blade of a chopper's axe. But, in spite of his distress, he noticed something unusual in Mr. Kent's manner.

"I'll bring those people in for you," said Kent, without a word about the guide's sufferings. "Tell me what arrangements you have made, for, you see, I intend to take your place throughout the trip. You'll get every dollar of the wages. Your camp on Squaw Lake is stocked, isn't it? And you have an extra canoe somewhere near Third Portage, I think? I have bacon and flour in my camp at the mouth of Porcupine Brook. With three in a canoe we'll not be able to take in much stuff. Is Dimsdale after a moose?"

"Whatever's yer idee?" asked Dave, in astonishment.

"That's none of your business," replied Kent. "You know I'm able for the job, and you can trust me about the money. All you have to do is tell me what arrangements you have made for the trip, and then sit around here and doctor yourself until I come back and hand you over the money. If you don't like this plan, then you'll have to find someone else to go down to Lime Rock for them."

"Ye kin guide 'em, if ye wanter," replied Dave. "I'm all-fired sick, an' that's a fact, an' all I was wantin' was the money, anyhow. Much obleeged, Mr. Kent."

Then he outlined the plans he had made for the trip, and told of the arrangements for feeding the two Dimsdales. Ten minutes later Kent left the cabin.

"Now, what's eatin' him?" asked Dave of his wife. "Maybe he's went mad of a suddent," suggested the woman.

"I'll tell ye," said Dave. "He's acquainted with them there Dimsdales, an' he wantster marry the girl. Ye'll see as I'm right afore two weeks is gone. He don't want no money, don't he! In yer eye! He wants the hull of it, an' the girl thrown in. If he gets her, I wouldn't be a mite surprised if he'd pass me over a extra fifty, or maybe a hundred, outer his own pocket. He had ought to, anyhow."

"He sure had. Well, I hope he gets her, then," said the woman.

Kent crossed to his own side of the river and took his belated plunge. As he dried himself on one of his blankets, the expression of his face did not suggest the anticipations of a lover; and the fact that, after regarding his three days' beard for several minutes in a scrap of looking-glass, he refrained from shaving it off, was surely another denial of Dave Carson's suspicions. He prepared and ate his breakfast, lit his pipe, and broke camp. He launched his twenty-foot canoe, stowed his dunnage and diminished provisions aboard, and set off down river. He wore the working-day garb of the ordinary woodsman, with oil-tanned moccasins on his feet, and a faded, shapeless felt hat on his head.

It was close upon ten o'clock when Kent ran his canoe ashore at the upper end of the village of Lime Rock. Paddle in hand, he went straight to the little frame hotel, shook hands with the manager, and asked for Mr. Dimsdale.

"They got here last night, and have been lookin' out for Dave Carson since afore breakfast-time," said the manager. "Maybe ye're acquainted with them, Mr. Kent? He's certainly a fine man, is Mr. Dimsdale, an' worth a power of money, I hear; an' Miss Dimsdale is sure a treat for sore eyes. Did ye happen to see anything of Carson on yer way down river?"

"Yes, I saw him," replied Kent. "He is laid on his back with rheumatism, and can't move hand or foot to-day. He asked me to come down for the Dimsdales and take them up as far as his place, and that's what I'm here for. I don't know them from Adam and Eve; and, as I am only obliging Dave in this matter, I want these people to think that I am a native."

"Well, I'll be danged!" exclaimed the other. "Ye're durned obliging, Mr. Kent, I must say. An' so ye don't know Mr. Dimsdale?"

"I have heard of him," said Kent.

"Here he is himself," whispered Mr. Cook, as a man of about fifty-five years of age entered the shabby office and beamed hopefully upon William Kent. Kent glanced at the stranger and looked swiftly away with narrowed eyes.

"Here's yer man at last, sir," continued the hotel-keeper, but now in his best voice. "He come in jist a minute ago."

"That's good!" exclaimed Mr. Dimsdale heartily. "We're ready for you, young man. My girl and I have been on the jump all morning, getting things together and looking out for you. But, see here, who told me that Dave Carson was on the wrong side of fifty, like myself? Someone told me so, this very morning."

"It was me told ye so, Mr. Dimsdale," said Cook. "This ain't Carson, but a friend of his who's come down for ye to obleege Dave, him bein' sick. That's the how of it, sir."

"Sorry to hear that Carson isn't well," said Mr, Dimsdale.

He turned to Kent and looked him over with keen but kindly eyes. "You know the river, I suppose?" he queried.

"Yes, sir," answered Kent, his manner and voice suggesting extreme shyness.

"Like a book," said the hotel man, "an' the slickest canoe-man on the river. Pity ye didn't git him for the entire trip, sir. He's a smarter guide, to my way of thinkin', than Dave Carson."

He winked covertly at Kent, but Kent was staring at the dusty floor. Cook gathered the impression that the amateur guide was not in love with his job. So he winked again, but this time at Dimsdale.

"Bill Kent's a rare good guide," he said, "but he's that bashful it hurts him."

Kent's canoe was large and a good freighter, and Kent had developed the trick of loading her to a science. Now he stowed the heaviest piece of dunnage under the middle bar, lashed tents and a bag of blankets and clothing atop, seated Mr. Dimsdale in the bottom of the canoe aft of this heap of freight and with his back against it, and Miss Dimsdale forward of it. He stowed smaller articles sharp forward and sharp aft, leaving just room enough in the stern for himself to squat to paddle and stand to pole. Then he shoved off and stepped aboard; and still the big canoe rode with her gunnels clear, amidships, by a generous four inches. She was perfectly trimmed, and as easy and quick to the turn of her master's wrist as many a canoe would be with only half that load aboard.

was two o'clock when they set out, and they came abreast of Dave Carson's place at three-thirty. Kent went up to the shack, only to return fifteen minutes later with the word that Dave was no better. Mr. Dimsdale replied that he was sorry to hear of Carson's illness, but that he was more than willing to continue the trip in Kent's care, if it could be arranged.

"I'm willing," said Kent; "but perhaps you'd better go up and see Dave. I've arranged with him about his supplies farther up river and his camps."

"Then there's no need of my getting out of the canoe," said Dimsdale. "Let us move right along for another hour or two, and then make camp."

"But I am going up to see this Dave Carson," said Miss Dimsdale. "I'll keep you only a few minutes. Please steady the canoe and give me a hand, Kent." Kent obeyed, steadying the canoe with one hand and helping her out with the other, but all as dully, as nervelessly, as a man of wood might have done it. And yet Florence Dimsdale was a very attractive young woman.

"Now, why the mischief does she want to see Carson?" asked Mr. Dimsdale. "Hope she won't take it into her head to stop and nurse him."

"Perhaps she suspects me of trying to take this job away from Dave," suggested Kent. "Well, she'll find that Dave has no objections to my taking you up. I'm doing it to oblige him."

The girl soon returned, and took her place in the canoe without a word about her visit to the Carsons.

They made their second halt at five o'clock, on a strip of pebbly beach in front of a little natural meadow hemmed in on three sides by tall spruces. Here Kent unloaded the canoe and lifted it from the water. He pitched the two little tents—he had left his own at Lime Rock—built a fire of drift-wood, and hung the kettle above it, and then took his axe into the woods and chopped green fuel for the night. Having felled and limbed a fair-sized spruce, and chopped it into five-foot lengths, he washed his hands in the river and set about preparing the evening meal. In one pan he fried bacon and in another flapjacks, and at the same time he kept his eye on the coffee-pot. The Dimsdales watched him for some time in silence, the father with frank admiration depicted upon his large face, and the daughter with a curious, ironical regard. Suddenly the girl jumped up lightly from her seat on a dunnage-bag and went over to the fire.

"Let me help you," she said. "Let me attend to the bacon."

"Thank yon, but it's quite unnecessary," replied Kent, without looking at her.

She continued to stand beside the fire for a few seconds, her cheeks flushed, her eyes at once puzzled and angry. Then she went back to her seat on the dunnage-bag.

They made an early start next morning, and for hours crawled up the flashing river without a pause. At noon they disembarked at the foot of a short pitch of water that could not be climbed by the canoe. It required only a short portage, bat they built a fire and ate their luncheon before making it. The Dimsdales helped Kent carry the outfit around the falls, despite his brief protest. When he launched the canoe in the easy water above and commenced to reload, Mr. Dimsdale interrupted him.

"Can't you arrange the cargo so that I can sit forward and face ahead?" he asked. "I might get a shot at something."

"Yes, sir, it can be done," replied Kent, without enthusiasm.

So they continued on their way, with Mr. Dimsdale seated forward of the middle bar, facing the bow, with a rifle in his hands, and Miss Dimsdale seated aft of amidships, with her back to her father and her face to the guide. Kent stood in the stern, his moccasined feet well set, the long, white pole of spruce swinging forward, plunging, bending to the thrust as regular as machinery. He swayed easily to his work, bending at knee and waist, throwing his right shoulder forward at the end of each long thrust. His lean, weather-tanned face was imperturbable, and his half-closed eyes looked ever beyond or away from the canoe at his feet, scanning the quick water ahead or glancing at the nearer shore. He did not speak. He paid no more attention to the charming young woman so close to him than to the dunnage-bag behind her graceful shoulders.

Florence Dimsdale was not accustomed to such treatment from any manner or condition of man, and she did not like it. She had rather enjoyed his very evident shyness of the first few hours of the trip, but now it seemed that his shyness had passed, giving place to utter indifference. And yet she had a particular reason, as well as a general one, for expecting very different behaviour from this young man. So she was puzzled as well as displeased.

Miss Dimsdale's broad-brimmed hat of soft felt was tipped low over her white forehead. The brim shaded her eyes, and remarkably attractive eyes they were, sometimes of the tawny brown of deep river water under an autumn sun, sometimes of the green of submerged river-grasses swaying in an amber tide. They were eyes capable of expressing all the great emotions and many of the little tempers.

Miss Dimsdale leaned back against the dunnage-bag and folded tents and studied William Kent from the ambush of her hat brim. She did not approve of him, though she admired the graceful yet masterful way in which he poled the heavy canoe steadily and unfalteringly up the flashing river. She considered him a fool and something of a knave, and wondered why he did not look like either. His stubbly beard offended her as being something at once ugly and dishonest. She noted his hands, which were strong, brown as mahogany on the backs, and hardened on the palms from the toil of paddle, pole, and axe, yet shapely and well cared for. She smiled ironically.

"That must be frightfully tiring work," she said suddenly.

This simple remark seemed to startle the guide for a moment. He looked down at the speaker, and for a fleeting instant the tan under his grey eyes seemed to take on a warmer tone. He looked at her face, of which he could see no more than the tip of her nose, her lips, and her admirable chin. His glance wandered down her slender, trimly-clad figure gravely, and, without any flicker of emotion, paused for a second in contemplation of her neat, heavy-soled outing-boots, then lifted and scanned the bright waters ahead; and all the while the girl's hidden eyes continued to regard his face curiously, disdainfully.

"Not to one who is accustomed to it," he said.

"I suppose you have spent your whole life in the woods and on the rivers about here?" she remarked.

"More or less, Miss Dimsdale," he answered steadily.

"Considerably less, I should think. You speak like an educated man. How is it you do not talk like Dave Carson?"

"Yes, Dave talks a great deal more than I do. He likes to talk, even when he hasn't anything to say worth the saying; but I don't."

Miss Dimsdale bit her lip at that, and if Kent had taken the trouble to look at her, he would have seen the flush of her quick blood grow on her rounded chin and white throat. But he did not look at her. He continued to gaze straight ahead of him up the flashing river. The blush of indignation faded from the girl's face as swiftly as it had flashed there; but the sting continued to agitate her pulse for several minutes, and she vowed in her heart to teach this insolent adventurer a lesson before the conclusion of the trip.

"What's that?" asked Mr. Dimsdale, in a sharp whisper.

"Looks to me like a buck deer," answered Kent quietly.

"Shall I fire? Is he within range? Shall I let fly at him?"

"I don't advise it, sir—too long a shot. Sit still and keep cool, and adjust your back-sight for one hundred yards. When we come abreast of that crooked cedar hanging over the water, let drive. I'll steady the canoe. Miss Dimsdale, please don't twist around in that way. You'll have us all in the river if you're not more careful."

The fat buck continued to stand motionless at the edge of the river, while the canoe crawled steadily and noiselessly up to the crooked cedar, Kent squatted and held the canoe bow-on to the swift current with a prolonged effort which made the muscles of his neck swell the brown skin sharply. Then Dimsdale began shooting. He was a wonder for speed, if for nothing else. The ejected shells hopped about him like a sudden plague of locusts. The buck jumped around end for end and wafted into the woods with his tail up, and Mr. Dimsdale continued to explode cartridges until the magazine was empty.

"Fine rifle," said Kent, getting to his feet again and sending the canoe forward.

Mr. Dimsdale twisted his head around and looked over his right shoulder at the guide. His large face showed delight and expectant inquiry.

"Do you think I hit him?" he asked breathlessly.

"I think you would have if he had waited a little longer," answered Kent. "You would have had him surrounded, anyway."

"I was steady as a church. Pretty good shooting what?"

"Oh, dad, don't you see that he is making fun of you?" cried Miss Dimsdale indignantly.

"Then why should he?" returned the big sportsman. "One can't expect to hit something every time one pulls the trigger, surely."

They went ashore at the point where the buck had stood a little while before, but there was no sign of bloodshed to be found. Mr. Dimsdale discovered a bullet wound high up on the trunk of a spruce, and was delighted with it.

"If that had hit him, it would have gone clean through him," he said to the guide.

"Undoubtedly," replied Kent, eyeing him curiously. He found it hard to believe that this good-humoured and simple soul could be the Alexander P. Dimsdale of whom he had heard so much.

Two days later, in mid-afternoon, the imp of mischance took a hand in the game. All day Kent had stood and plied the white pole in silence; all day the girl had sat and watched him covertly, puzzled and disdainful; and all day Mr. Dimsdale had sat with his fine rifle in his hands and his eyes fairly bulging in his anxiety to catch sight of something upon which to open fire.

They were in swift water when it happened—in swift and broken water running over a rocky bottom. Kent was finding difficulty in getting a hold for the iron-shod point of his pole; but, in spite of the difficulty, he was walking the canoe up stream in a masterly manner. And then, very suddenly, Mr. Dimsdale caught sight of something on the nearer shore and right abreast of him that looked like a bear. Whether or not it was a bear is not known to this day. He twisted himself sharply and violently around and commenced pumping lead across the shoreward gunnel, at right angles to the course of the canoe. Kent was in the middle of a long, strong thrust. The sportsman's abrupt change of position and the recoil of the rifle shook the canoe from stem to stern; the iron-shod end of the straining pole slipped on the rock, out went the guide over the stern, and over turned [sic] the loaded canoe.

Kent was the hero of the occasion. Leaving Dimsdale to shift for himself, he grabbed Florence by the neck of her sweater with his right hand and a dunnage-bag with his left and fought his way to the shore. He dropped the girl and the bag, raced down the shore for a distance of eighty or one hundred yards, and dashed into the angry water again. This time, after mighty efforts and no little peril to life and limb, he brought the swamped canoe to the shingle. A glance showed him that the axe and a spare paddle, which had been lashed under a gunnel, were safe, and that one small box of provisions remained wedged in the stern. After that he salvaged a tent, a roll of blankets, and a coffee-pot.

Dripping, weary, and bruised, Kent returned to where the Dimsdales sat forlornly on two boulders. Mr. Dimsdale still held his rifle in his hand.

"It was a bear," he said. "I'll swear it was a bear!" "Rather an expensive bear, even if you had bagged him," retorted Kent. "We are fortunate to be no worse off than we are."

He built a roaring fire of drift-wood, and rigged poles upon which he hung the blankets to dry. The contents of the dunnage-bag had not suffered. He set out the contents of the sole remaining box of provisions.

"It is enough," he said. "We can make the mouth of Porcupine to-morrow, where there is a shack well supplied with grub. We may as well camp here for the night, I think."

"Whatever you say, young man," replied Mr. Dimsdale, "I'm a duffer. I've half a mind to heave this confounded gun into the river. But for you, we'd be in a pretty mess. You saved my daughter's life and most of the outfit."

"Miss Dimsdale would have scrambled ashore without my help," said Kent.

Early next morning the girl came to Kent while he was busy at the fire, before her father was awake.

"I know your game," she remarked, blushing, but looking at him with steady eyes. "I want to warn you that I know you for a fake guide before you save my life again. You may as well spare yourself the risk and the trouble. I know what you are, and I know what you are up to."

Kent looked embarrassed and startled. He had nothing to say.

"I knew that you were not what you pretended to be from the first," she continued, "and Carson let slip the fact that you had promised to hand over all your wages to him. So I saw your game. I am sorry. You do not look like that kind of man. Oh, I know who you are! You are William Kent, the artist. Father does not know."

"Yes, I'm William Kent, the artist, son of John Kent," he answered. "Why didn't you warn your father?"

"There was no need of disturbing his enjoyment of the trip," she replied.

"You are right, Miss Dimsdale. I gave up my—my plans before we had been out a day."

"You gave them up?"

"Yes. When I saw you, I gave up that mad idea."

"Thank you. You are delightfully frank. You gave up the mad idea as soon as you set eyes on me."

"Not quite so soon as that, but very nearly; and I must say that your father had something to do with my change of intention."

The girl's face was a study in bewilderment, indignation, and amusement. She laughed somewhat unsteadily.

"I give you my word of honour that you have nothing to worry about, as far as I am concerned," continued Kent. "Will you shake hands on it?"

She extended a limp hand silently, and Kent pressed it warmly.

They reached the mouth of Porcupine that day, and William Kent was like another man. He talked, told stories, laughed, and showed Miss Dimsdale the most marked attentions. Dimsdale responded heartily to the sudden change in the guide's manners, but Miss Dimsdale did not. After two days at the mouth of Porcupine they went up to Squaw Lake, where Mr. Dimsdale managed—how, I don't know—to slay a bull moose.

Two days after the bagging of the moose, and while Mr. Dimsdale was still talking continuously about that remarkable achievement, Florence Dimsdale discovered Dave Carson's extra canoe in a clump of young spruces, dragged it out, and launched it upon the lake. She knew nothing about the management of a canoe, and this particular canoe happened to be one that required a great deal of expert management. It had originally been covered with birch bark. Carson had put on its present canvas jacket himself, and during the process had warped the ribs until the bottom of the canoe was as round as a log.

Kent was standing in the doorway of the camp, pretending to listen to Dimsdale's talk about the shooting of the moose, when the girl's scream reached him. He turned like a flash and bolted through the woods and down to the shore. He saw the upturned canoe in the middle of the lake. Snatching up a paddle, he ran his own canoe into the water, sprang aboard, and paddled like mad. The big canoe lifted half her length out of water in answer to every stroke of the broad blade.

Kent reached the upturned canoe and found Florence clinging bravely to the rounded bow. He ran his canoe close against her.

"Now grab the gunnel and work your way along until you get hold of the middle bar," he said.

She did so. He shipped his paddle and moved forward.

"I can't pull you in without upsetting the canoe," he said. "Have you strength enough left to pull yourself aboard?"

She nodded.

"Pull away," he said; and as the weight of her efforts began to tip the canoe toward her, he put his weight on the other gunnel, more and more as it was required, until finally she was in the canoe and he was in the water. He swam around and laid hold of the stern.

"Now paddle for shore for all you are worth," he said. "You can't upset her with me hanging on here."

were in their last camp, twelve miles above Lime Rock, when Kent referred to that subject which neither of them had mentioned since the morning after the spill in the rapids ten long days ago. Mr. Dimsdale had retired to his tent.

"Will you promise never to tell your father what you—guessed about me?" asked Kent.

"Certainly," replied the girl, in a constrained voice.

"As you know, your father trimmed mine in some deal in Western lands, five or six years ago—trimmed him to the hide," said Kent.

"I didn't know," said the girl.

"You didn't know? Then why"

"Please go on with your story."

"With my confession, rather. I'm throwing myself on your mercy. I'm trying to whitewash my character in your eyes. Well, my father gave me the impression that Mr. Dimsdale was some sort of pirate, and the sole cause of his financial distress. I have since begun to suspect that my father exaggerated the case. Anyway, when circumstances put Alexander P. Dimsdale into the hollow of my hand, so to speak, I decided not to let the chance escape me of getting even with him, somehow or other. I meant to give him a jolly good scare, at least, and force him to admit that he was a robber. But when I saw you, I gave up that fool idea; and the more I saw of your father, the more I liked him. That's all. You knew it before, but I have been aching to confess to you—to make a clean breast of it."

Miss Dimsdale did not speak. She turned her face away from the fire.

"Can you forgive me?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Florence!" he said, after a long silence.

She turned her head and looked at him in the firelight.

"Haven't I a ghost of a chance?" he asked breathlessly. "I pulled you out of the water twice. Doesn't that give me the right to a chance? Dear Heavens, girl, I love you!"

She began to laugh softly.

"Are you laughing at me?" he asked, and took both her hands in both of his.

"I am laughing at myself," she answered, in a trembling voice. "I—I didn't guess your reason for guiding us at all. I thought you—were a fortune-hunter."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Kent.

"And I was frightfully cut up when you denied it," she said, looking at him with the firelight in her eyes.

Kent returned her gaze wildly, with a bloodless face. "I'd forgotten all about your beastly fortune!" he cried.

"Let us both forget it," she breathed, leaning closer to him. "It would be a poor love that would shy at a thing like that. Bill, I thought you said—that you—loved me?"

Then, thank Heaven, he came out of his trance and proved that he did.