“Follow yees!” soliloquized Mike—­“The divil burn ye, for a guessing yankee as ye ar’—­how am I to follow with such legs as the likes of these?  If it wasn’t for the masther and the missus, ra’al jontlemen and ladies they be, I’d turn my back on ye, in the desert, and let ye find that Beaver estate, in yer own disagreeable company.  Ha!—­well, I must thry, and if the boat won’t go, it’ll be no fault of the man that has a good disposition to make it.”

Mike now took his seat on a board that lay across the gunwale of the skiff at a most inconvenient height, placed two sculls in the water, one of which was six inches longer than the other, made a desperate effort, and got his craft fairly afloat.  Now, Michael O’Hearn was not left-handed, and, as usually happens with such men, the inequality between the two limbs was quite marked.  By a sinister accident, too, it happened that the longest oar got into the strongest hand, and there it would have staid to the end of time; before Mike would think of changing it, on that account.  Joel, alone, sat with his face towards the head of the lake, and he alone could see the dilemma in which the county Leitrim-man was placed.  Neither the captain nor his wife thought of looking behind, and the yankee had all the fun to himself.  As for Mike, he succeeded in getting a few rods from the land, when the strong arm and the longer lever asserting their superiority, the skiff began to incline to the westward.  So intense, however, was the poor fellow’s zeal, that he did not discover the change in his course until he had so far turned as to give him a glimpse of his retiring master; then he inferred that all was right, and pulled more leisurely.  The result was, that in about ten minutes, Mike was stopped by the land, the boat touching the north shore again, two or three rods from the very point whence it had started.  The honest fellow got up, looked around him, scratched his head, gazed wistfully after the fast-receding boat of his master, and broke out in another soliloquy.

“Bad luck to them that made ye, ye one-sided thing!” he said, shaking his head reproachfully at the skiff:  “there’s liberty for ye to do as ye ought, and ye’ll not be doing it, just out of contrairiness.  Why the divil can’t ye do like the other skiffs, and go where ye’re wanted, on the road towards thim beavers?  Och, ye’ll be sorry for this, when ye’re left behind, out of sight!”

Then it flashed on Mike’s mind that possibly some article had been left in the hut, and the skiff had come back to look after it; so, up he ran to the captain’s deserted lodge, entered it, was lost to view for a minute, then came in sight again, scratching his head, and renewing his muttering—­“No,” he said, “divil a thing can I see, and it must be pure con_trair_iness!  Perhaps the baste will behave betther next time, so I’ll thry it ag’in, and give it an occasion.  Barring obstinacy, ’t is as good-lookin’ a skiff as the best of them.”