In summer, Long Lake has no great beauty and shrinks, leaving a white saline crust on its wide margin of sun-baked mud, but it is a picturesque stretch of water when the snow melts in spring and the reflections of the birches quiver on the smooth belt along its windward edge.  Farther out, the shadows of flying clouds chase each other across the flashing surface.  Two or three leaky canoes generally lie among the trees, and in the afternoon Charnock dragged one down, and helping Sadie on board, paddled up the lake.

As they crept round a point flocks of ducks left the water and the air throbbed with a beat of wings that gradually died away.  The fire, round which the others sat, was out of sight, and the rustle of the tossing birches emphasized the quietness.  Charnock let the canoe drift, and Sadie looked up at him from her low seat among the wagon robes he had brought.

“What are you going to do about your farm?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet, and don’t see why I should bore you with my troubles.”

“Pshaw!” said Sadie.  “You want to put the thing off; but you know you can’t.”

Charnock made a gesture of humorous resignation.  “Very well!  I expect I won’t be able to carry on the farm.”

“No,” said Sadie, thoughtfully, “I don’t think you could.  There are men who would be able, but not you.”

“I dare say you’re right, but you’re not flattering,” Charnock rejoined with a smile.

Sadie gave him a steady look.  “Your trouble is you laugh when you ought to set your lips and get busy.  One has got to hustle in Canada.”

“I have hustled.  In fact, it’s hustling that has brought me low.  If I hadn’t spent my money trying to break fresh land, I wouldn’t have been so deep in debt.”

“And you’d have had more time to loaf about the settlement?”

“On the whole, I don’t think that’s kind.  If I hadn’t come to the settlement, I wouldn’t have seen you, and that’s about the only comfort I have left.”

A touch of color crept into Sadie’s face, but her thoughtful look did not change.

“Well,” she said, “I’d surely have liked you to make good, and don’t know that we mightn’t have got the mortgage held over; but it wouldn’t have been much use.  You’d have started again and then got tired and not have stayed with it.”  She spread out her hands impatiently.  “That’s the kind of man you are!”

“I’m afraid it’s true,” Charnock admitted.  “But I hope you like me all the same.”

Sadie was silent for a few moments, but her color was higher and Charnock mused.  He supposed she meant she could have persuaded her father to come to his help, and it looked as if she well knew his failings.  Still he felt rather amused than resentful.

“We’ll let that go,” she resumed.  “I want you to quit joking and listen.  We’re going to have a boom at the settlement as soon as the railroad’s opened, and I and the old man can hardly manage the store and hotel.  We’ve got to have help; somebody the boys like and we can trust.  Well, if you took hold the right way——­”