“Oh, Doctor! like the poor old Galilean; when he thought it was all up, he went out and dug bait, and started off a-fishing.  You attend to your fishing, and let me dream.  If God should attempt to reveal Himself to you to-night, which I wouldn’t do, He would have to elevate and enlarge and change you to a celestial, so that you could understand Him; or shrink and shrivel Himself to your capacity, and address you on your level, as I do, using the language and imagery of this earth, and you would answer Him as you do me—­’It is all of the earth—­earthy.’  I want to sleep.”

The Doctor pondered as if there was a matter for thought in what he had heard, and a little ripple of under-talk ran on about the subjects, the everlasting old, old and eternally new problems that men have dreamed and stumbled over, and always will—­which Bart had dreamily spoken of as if they were very familiar to his thoughts, and they spoke of him, and wondered if anything had happened, and pulled their boat to a new position, while the overtaxed youth subsided into fitful slumber.  Theodore finally awoke him, and said that they proposed to light up the jack, if he would take the spear, and they would push out to deeper water, and try for bass.  Bart stared about him uncomprehendingly for a moment.  “Oh, Theodore, my fishing days are over!  I will never ‘wound the gentle bosom of this lake’ with fish spear, or gig, or other instrument; and I’ve backed this old rifle around for the last time to-day.”

“Bart, think of all our splendid times in the woods!”

“What a funny dream I had:  I dreamed I was a young Indian, not John Brown’s ‘little Indian,’ but a real red, strapping, painted young Indian, and our tribe was encamped over on the west side of this Indian lake, by Otter Point; and I was dreadfully in love with the chief’s daughter.”

“Who didn’t love you again,” said Theodore.

“Of course not, being a well-brought up young Indianess:  and I went to the Indian spring, that runs into the pond, just above ’Barker’s Landing,’ that you all know of.”

“I never knew that it was an Indian spring,” said Young.

“Well, it is,” replied Bart.  “It has a sort of an earthen rim around it, or had a few minutes ago; and the water bubbles up from the bottom.  Well, you drop a scarlet berry into it, and if it rises and runs over the rim, the sighed-for loves you, or she don’t, and I have forgotten which.  I found a scarlet head of ginseng, and dropped the seeds in one after another, and they all plumped straight to the bottom.”

“Well, what was the conclusion?”

“Logical.  The berries were too heavy for the current, or the current was too weak for the berries.”

“And the Indianess?”

“She and all else faded out.”

“Oh, pshaw! how silly!” said Young.  “Will you take the spear, or won’t you?”

“Will you take the spear, or won’t you?” replied Bart, mimicking him with great effect.