and horse-race at Scalp Point, and found their liking for him increased.  Finally, they were to go south at noon on Friday, and then put it off till the night boat.  After supper they took out the skiff from the rocky landing for a last row.  They pulled round under the dark cliffs that rose sheer from the water and were crowned with the wall of the old fort, the cliffs themselves seamed across with strata of white, like mortar-lines of some Titanic masonry.  They gave chase to a tug puffing northward half a mile to the right, towing two or three canal-boats through the still water and the stiller night.  Then a sail came ghostily out of the shadow astern, and stole on them as they drew away and waited for it.  By and by the boat crept up, dropped away a little from the light wind, and passed close to leeward.  There was one man in her sitting in the stern, and the whole made hardly a sound.  They knew the man at the tiller:  it was the long fellow again.  He took them in, and they talked as they drifted on.  The lights behind the locusts fell far astern.

“Come, come!” said Colman at last:  “this won’t do.  We have a long pull now, and we’re to be off at two in the morning.”

Field turned and asked the young fellow if he was engaged for a week or two.  No, not especially:  he had been running parties a good deal off and on, but they were getting pretty thin now, and there was not much call for boats.

“Will you go with me on a gunning and fishing cruise through the lakes?” asked Field; and the long fellow said he’d go with him as soon as any other man, and when should they start?  “To-morrow morning,” answered Field, “any time you like.”

They got into the skiff, threw off the line, and pulled back to the Fort House; that is, Field pulled and Colman lay in the stern and listened to the water gurgling under the boat.  They landed and climbed up the rocks.

“So you’re going back?” said Colman.  “Dan, I wish you’d come home.”

Field flushed and turned sharply.  “Oh, hang your preaching, Phil!” he snapped out.  “You’re too infernally flat.  Who said anything about going back?”

The steamer was due in three or four hours.  They went straight to bed, and it seemed about ten minutes afterward when Colman woke with a start and saw Field striking a light:  it was twenty minutes of two.  They waited an hour for the boat, walking about or sitting by the fire.  Then the landlord came in with a lantern and said the boat was coming, and they went down to the wharf and waited for her.  The bell rang, the wheels ploughed in, the friends bade each other good-night, gave a hearty grip of the hand, and then there was one left alone.  Field went back to bed.  In the morning he made himself a rough outfit of clothes and boots, and started on foot with his guide.  He did not know the guide’s name, and called him “Long” to begin with, and the guide answered as if that had been his name from his christening, only glancing askance at Field the first time with a twinkle in his eye, and would give no other name after that.  “A name was only a handle to a man, any way, and one was as good as another, or better.”