It would be hard to define the motive that led Field to answer.  “Well, if it’s the same to you, Long it is.  You can call me Meadow when you don’t think of anything better.”

Long had an evident admiration for his companion which increased every day.  Field was a good shot, as good a fisherman as himself, rowed and walked and sailed with about equal strength and skill, could do wonderful tricks of tossing balls and other feats, could eat anything or go without, sleep anywhere, and be good-humored in any circumstances; and Field found Long a trusty, self-contained, clever fellow, and was much entertained by his dry humor and amusing stories of bear-hunts and deer-hunts and queer adventures.  They tramped that region pretty thoroughly, camping out at nights or sleeping at the nearest of the little settlements.

One morning they took a boat at the head of the lake and rowed down toward a pond on the east side among the hills, where Long said the ducks came “so thick you couldn’t see through ’em, and where the water was so shallow and the mud so deep that, when the ducks were shot, the Devil couldn’t get ’em ’thout he had a dog.”  After a while a wind came swooping down on the quiet water through a dip in the hills, and nearly blew the skiff’s bows out of water.  The sleeping lake woke up, pitched and foamed, and beat upon the bows and dashed over the young men till they were nearly as wet as the waves themselves.  Field was pulling to Long’s stroke, the wind fluttering his hair in his eyes and the water running down his back, but he would not say anything till Long did.  Presently Long looked round over his shoulder, and hailed, “I guess we’d best throw up and get a tow:  I hear the Wanita coming down.”

Presently the little steamer came along and threw them a line.  Long caught it and made it fast.  They were nearly jerked out of the water or flung into it, and then went boiling along in the steamer’s wake.  A boat-hand drew in the line, and they climbed out, swaying and floundering through a cloud of spray, and all the passengers crowding back to see.  They went forward and up on deck, and the captain spoke to Long from the pilot-house, calling him Trapp.  Long talked to him through the window and introduced Field when he came along:  “Mr. Meadow, Cap’n Charner.  I’m showing him bear-tracks and things around the pond.”

“How do you do, captain?” said Field.  “Don’t know me in the part of Neptune, eh?”

“Oho!” said the captain, glancing aside from the wheel.  “It’s you, is it?  Where’s your friend?—­Trapp,” he continued, “you’d better take Mr. Meadow down and get Hess to dry his coat.”  They went down to the little cabin, where a trim, plainly dressed, but very pretty girl was busy with some sewing.  She started and laughed when she saw Long and how wet he was.  Then she saw there was somebody else, and she blushed a little.

“Mr. Meadow, Hess,” and “Miss Hessie Charner, Meadow,” introduced Long; and he told her what the captain had bidden him.