“If you had read the chapters, there are two of them, that tell the story of the fig tree, you would have found that the disciples called it cursing when it was only a quiet saying:  ’Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth.’  You wouldn’t call that cursing, would you?”

“O my, no, that ain’t wuth callin’ a cuss; they ain’t no cuss about it.  Now, fer whole souled, brimstun heeled cuss words, they’s——­”

“Never mind telling me any.  They wouldn’t do me any good, and the clergyman forward there might hear them.”

“Do these clergy belong to the Church?”

“They both think they do in different ways, but, strange to say, neither of them belongs to your Church.”

“Wall, I ain’t got no quarrl at ’em.  I guaiss all the good folks ’ll get to Heaven somehow.”

“Amen!” answered the lawyer, and the conversation ended.

There was no visible cart track to the lakes.  If Rawdon’s whiskey mill, as Ben called it, was really somewhere among them, there must of necessity have been a road tapping their shores at some point, for an extensive business employing so many men could hardly exist without a means of easy transportation.  To the neighbourhood of the Lakes Settlement, however, this road was a mystery.  The party halted at a log house by the side of the road proper, and Mr. Perrowne, who claimed Richards as a parishioner, asked his wife if he and his friends could have the use of her boat.  Mrs. Richards gave the required permission very graciously, and the excursionists struck into the bush path which led to Lake No. 1, or Richards’ Lake.  The bush had once been underbrushed, perhaps a long time back by the Indians who generally made for water; but the underbrush was now replaced by a dense growth of Canadian yew, commonly called Ground Hemlock, the crimson berry of which is one of the prettiest objects in the vegetable world.  It, and other shrubs and small saplings, encroached on the narrow path, and, in places, almost obliterated it.  The land rose into a ridge a short distance from the water, so that it was invisible until the crest was reached.  Then, a dark circular lake, seemingly altogether shut in by the elsewhere dense forest, made its appearance.  There were remains of a log shelter near the shore on the left, and, between it and the somewhat muddy beach, Toner lit a fire of drift wood to drive away the flies which followed the party out of the bush.  The punt was soon discovered moored to a stake, a punt with three seats flush with the gunwales, one each fore and aft, and one in the centre.

“O, I saye,” cried Mr. Perrowne, “look at that lovely little island out there!  See, you can hardly see it because of the black shadows.  What a place to fish! and here we are without a single rod.”

“Ain’t no need to trouble about rods,” remarked Ben; “I kin cut you half-a-dozen in two shakes of a dead lamb’s taiul.”