Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with more reticence than usual.

“You don’t know where I have been, laddie,” exclaimed Eva.  “Look at all the fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket sagged down with gold-streaked quartz.  I went around to the other side of the island, where the counterfeiters’ hole is, to look into it while the morning sun on the lake threw a reflection.”

“There’s nothing wonderful to be seen there.”

“How will we know that?  The rocks sound hollow all about, and there may be a great cavern full of counterfeiters’ relics.  Oh, Adam, I saw Louis Satanette’s sail!”

“He comes early this morn.”

“I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore.  He says we’ll explore the counterfeiters’ hole, and let us go directly after breakfast.”

“What is it worth the exploring?” said Adam.  “Four rocks set on end, and you crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back out again.  It’s but a burrow, and ends against the hill’s heart of rock.  I’ve to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk.”

The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting and sifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray.  As if there was not enough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the foot of the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water.  He looked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish or two glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook dropped in as his excuse for loitering.

The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.

Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the earth, the rocks.  He lay back in the boat’s stern and gazed at their summit of pinetrees and ferns.  Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a lifetime’s study.  Yet Adam’s eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if it gave him no pleasure.  Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him.  He was so haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.

The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from his listless attitude.  He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws in the direction of the passing oarsman.  Louis Satanette was all in white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant exhilaration.  He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past Adam.

“What have you the matter?” he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.

“Oh, it’s naught,” said Adam.  “I’m just weary, weary.”

“You have been gone a very, very long time,” said Louis, using the double Canadian adjective.  “Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout.”