There were endless devices of colored lamps and lanterns, figures of crosses, crowns, the Seal of Solomon, and the most strange effects produced on foliage and in the water by red and green and purple fires.  It was a night of enchantment, and the hotel and its grounds on the dark background of the night were like the stately pleasure-house in “Kubla Khan.”

But the season was drawing to an end.  The hotels, which could not find room for the throngs on Saturday night, say, were nearly empty on Monday, so easy are pleasure-seekers frightened away by a touch of cold, forgetting that in such a resort the most enjoyable part of the year comes with the mellow autumn days.  That night at ten o’clock the band was scraping away in the deserted parlor, with not another person in attendance, without a single listener.  Miss Lamont happened to peep through the window-blinds from the piazza and discover this residuum of gayety.  The band itself was half asleep, but by sheer force of habit it kept on, the fiddlers drawing the perfunctory bows, and the melancholy clarionet men breathing their expressive sighs.  It was a dismal sight.  The next morning the band had vanished.

The morning was lowering, and a steady rain soon set in for the day.  No fishing, no boating; nothing but drop, drop, and the reminiscence of past pleasure.  Mist enveloped the islands and shut out the view.  Even the spirits of Mrs. Farquhar were not proof against this, and she tried to amuse herself by reconstructing the season out of the specimens of guests who remained, who were for the most part young ladies who had duty written on their faces, and were addicted to spectacles.

“It could not have been,” she thought, “ultrafashionable or madly gay.  I think the good people come here; those who are willing to illuminate.”

“Oh, there is a fast enough life at some of the hotels in the summer,” said the artist.

“Very likely.  Still, if I were recruiting for schoolmarms, I should come here.  I like it thoroughly, and mean to be here earlier next year.  The scenery is enchanting, and I quite enjoy being with ’Proverbial Philosophy’ people.”

Late in the gloomy afternoon King went down to the office, and the clerk handed him a letter.  He took it eagerly, but his countenance fell when he saw that it bore a New York postmark, and had been forwarded from Richfield.  It was not from Irene.  He put it in his pocket and went moodily to his room.  He was in no mood to read a homily from his uncle.

Ten minutes after, he burst into Forbes’s room with the open letter in his hand.

“See here, old fellow, I’m off to the Profile House.  Can you get ready?”

“Get ready?  Why, you can’t go anywhere tonight.”

“Yes I can.  The proprietor says he will send us across to Redwood to catch the night train for Ogdensburg.”

“But how about the Lachine Rapids?  You have been talking about those rapids for two months.  I thought that was what we came here for.”