“That was silly,” said her brother.

“I know it was, now.  Because I ran after it, and it ran; and, one by one, a whole herd of the cunning little things sprang out of the hemlock scrub and went off bucking and bucketing in all directions, and I, like a simpleton, hard after one of them——­”

“Little idiot,” said her brother solicitously.  “Are you stark mad?”

“No, I’m just plain mad.  Because, before I knew it, there came a crash in the underbrush and the biggest, furriest, and wickedest wild boar I ever saw halted in front of me, ears forward, every hair on end——­”

“Lord save us, you jumped the sow!” groaned her brother.  “She might have torn you to pieces, you ninny!”

“She meant to, I think.  The next thing I knew she came headlong, mouth open, fairly screaming at me; and I turned and jumped clean into the Gray Water.  Oh, Scott, it was humiliating to have to swim to the point with all my clothes on, scramble into the canoe, and shove off because a very angry wild creature drove me out of my own woods!”

“Well, dear, you won’t ever interfere with a sow and pigs again, will you?” said Kathleen so earnestly that everybody laughed.

“What’s the rifle for?” inquired Scott.  “You don’t intend to hunt for her, do you?”

“Of course not.  I’m not vindictive or cruel.  But old Miller said, when I came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping them, and sending them to other people for stocking purposes.  The Pink ’uns want some; why don’t you?”

“I don’t want to shoot or trap them,” said Scott obstinately.

“Miller says they pulled down deer last winter and tore them to shreds.  Everything in the forest is afraid of them; they drive the deer from the feeding-grounds, and I don’t believe a lynx or even any of the bear that climb over the fence would dare attack them.”

Kathleen said:  “You really ought to ask some men up here to shoot, Scott.  I don’t wish to be chased about by a boar.”

“They never bother people,” he protested.  “What are you going to do with that rifle, Geraldine?”

“My nerve has gone,” she confessed, laughing; “I prefer to have it with me when I take walks.  It’s really safer,” she added seriously to Kathleen.  “Miller says that a buck deer can be ugly, too.”

“Oh, Lord!” said her brother, laughing; “it’s only because you’re the prettiest thing ever, in that hunting dress!  Don’t tell me; and kindly be careful where you point that rifle.”

“As if I needed instructions!” retorted his sister.  “I wish I could see a boar—­a big one with a particularly frightful temper and tusks to match.”

“I’ll bet you that you can’t kill a boar,” he said in good-humoured disdain.

“I don’t see any to kill.”

“Well, I bet you can’t find one.  And if you do, I bet you don’t kill him.”