in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of
the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden
guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend
with puzzled gaze.

"I say, Jerrard, you seem to be in a good humor."

"Nothing like the ozone of the forest to make you sparkle," chuckled the
traffic-manager.

It is unnecessary to describe the incidents of the trip across the
lake, the apprehensive flinching of the fat president whenever the canoe
lurched, and his fear of breaking through the bottom of the frail shell.

But when they were well out on the carry road in the buckboard, Jerrard,
gazing on the indescribable mixture of reproach, horror, pain and
astonishment that the president's face presented laughed until Whittaker
forgot dignity, cares and fears, and laughed, too.

Two days later, as they were eating their lunch beside the famous spring
in the north cove of Kennemagon Whittaker stretched himself luxuriously
on the gray moss, and said;

"Jerrard, it's an earthly paradise! I never had such fishing, never saw
such scenery. I want to come here every summer. I'd like to buy a tract
here. But that six-mile drive--O dear me! It makes me shiver when I
think I've got to bump back over it in two weeks."

That evening one Rowe, a timber-land exploring prospector, whose
employment was locating tracts for the cutting of pulp stuff, stopped at
the camp and accepted hospitality for the night. After supper the three
lay in their bunks and chatted, while the guide pottered about the
household tasks.

"Much travel over the Poquette Carry?" asked Whittaker.

"Good deal," said Rowe. "It's the thoroughfare between the West Branch
and Spinnaker, you know. All the men for the woods leave the train at
Sunkhaze, boat it across Spinnaker, and walk the carry at Poquette. All
the supplies for the camp come that way, too. They bateau goods up the
river from the West Branch end of the carry."

"Why doesn't some one fix that road?" asked the president. "Looks to me
as if they had brought rocks and thrown them into the trail just to make
it worse."

"It's all wild lands hereabouts," explained the prospector. "The county
commissioners lay out the roads and the landowners are supposed to build
them, but they don't. Timber-land owners don't like roads through their
woods, anyway."

"I see they don't," replied Whittaker dryly. "What did you pay, Jerrard,
for having your canoe