To see Josef, enraptured with the delicate sport, approach a net carefully till within an inch of the smile, and then give the old graven image a smart rap on the legs in question to make him leap headlong into the snare—­to see that and Josef’s black Indian eyes glitter with joy at the chase is amusing.  I make him slaughter the game instantly, which appears supererogatory to Josef who would exactly as soon have a collection of slimy ones leaping around the canoe.  But I have them dead and done for promptly, and piled under the stern seat.  And on we paddle to the next.

The day to which I had retired from my dinner-party and the tactical lecture of my distinguished cousin was a late August day of two years before.  The frogging fleet included two canoes, that of young John Dudley who was doing his vacation with me, and my own.  In each canoe, as is Hoyle for canoeing in Canada, were two guides and a “m’sieur.”  The other boat, John’s, was somewhere on the opposite shore of Lac des Passes, the Lake of the Passes, crawling along edges of bays and specializing in old logs and submerged rocks, after frogs with a landing-net, the same as us.  But John—­to my mind coarser—­was doing his own frogging.  The other boat was nothing to us except for an occasional yell when geography brought us near enough, of “How many?” and envy and malice and all uncharitableness if the count was more, and hoots of triumph if less.

In my craft sailed, besides Josef and myself, as bow paddler, The Tin Lizzie.  We called him that except when he could hear us, and I think it would have done small harm to call him so then, as he had the brain of a jack-rabbit and managed not to know any English, even when soaked in it daily.  John Dudley had named him because of the plebeian and reliable way in which he plugged along Canadian trails.  He set forth the queerest walk I have ever seen—­a human Ford, John said.  He was also quite mad about John.  There had been a week in which Dudley, much of a doctor, had treated, with cheerful patience and skill, an infected and painful hand of the guide’s, and this had won for him the love eternal of our Tin Lizzie.  Little John Dudley thought, as he made jokes to distract the boy, and worked over his big throbbing fist, the fist which meant daily bread—­little John thought where the plant of love springing from that seed of gratitude would at last blossom.  Little he thought as the two sat on the gallery of the camp, and the placid lake broke in silver on pebbles below, through what hell of fire and smoke and danger the kindliness he gave to the stupid young guide would be given back to him.  Which is getting ahead of the story.