“‘No,’ said I, ‘I’ll drop a line.’ I remembered how I ‘dropped in,’ over on Long Lake, one day, and had no inclination to drop in to the St. Lawrence, especially when there are old lawyer fishes there to summon me for assault and battery on a ‘Shatagee trout.’”

“Doctor,” said Hank Martin, one of our boatmen, who had been listening to the Doctor’s narrative, “I don’t want to be considered for’ard or sassy, but I’d like to know how much of these kinds of stories we hired folks are obligated to believe?”

“Well,” replied the Doctor, “there are three of you in all, and between you, you must make up a reasonable case, as Spalding would say, of faith in everything you may hear.  This you may do by dividing it up among you.”

“Very good,” said Martin, with imperturbable gravity; “I only wanted a fair understanding of the matter on the start.”

CHAPTER V.

A FRIGHTENED ANIMAL—­TROLLING FOR TROUT—­THE BOATMAN’S STORY.

We sat in front of our tents, enjoying the delightful breeze that swept quietly over the lake, and watching the stars as they stole out from the depths.  The whippoorwill piped away in the old forests, and the frogs bellowed like ten thousand buffaloes along the shore.  The roar of their hoarse voices went rolling over the lake, through the old woods, and surging up against the mountains to be thrown back by the echoes that dwell among the hills.  We had knocked the ashes from our pipes, and were about retiring to our tents for the night, when a long wake in the water across the line of the moon’s reflection, attracted our attention.  It was evidently made by some animal swimming, and the Doctor and Martin started in pursuit.  It proved to be a deer which was apparently making its way to an island, midway across the lake.  They had no desire to slaughter it, and they concluded to drive it ashore where we were.  They headed it in the proper direction, and followed the terrified animal as it swam for life towards the island on which we were encamped.  We understood their purpose, and sat perfectly silent.  The deer struck the island directly in front of our tent, and dashed forward in wild affright, right through the midst of us, towards the thicket in our rear, glad to be rid of his pursuers on the water.  As he bounded past us, we sprang up and shouted, and if ever a dumb animal was astonished it was that deer.  He leaped up a dozen feet into the air, bleated out in the extremity of his terror, and plunged madly forward, as if a whole legion of fiends were at his tail.  The stag hounds which were tied to a sapling, by their fierce baying, added vigor to his flight.  We heard his snort at every bound across the island, and his plunge into the lake on the other side.