nsented, though
rather hesitatingly, to try one more dawn adventure.

We packed up our guns, ammunition, extra wraps, rubber boots, and alarm
clock. These five things are essential--nay, six are necessary to real
content, and the sixth is a bottle of tar and sweet oil. But of that
more anon.

Thus equipped, we went down to a tiny cottage on the shore. We reached
the village at dusk, stopped at "the store" to buy bread and butter and
fruit, then went on to the little white house that we knew would always
be ready to receive us. It has served us as a hunting-lodge many times
before, and has always treated us well.

There is something very pleasant about going back to a well-known place
of this sort. It offers the joy of home and the joy of camping, the
charm of strangeness and the charm of familiarity. We light the candles
and look about. Ah, yes! There are the magazines we left last winter
when we came down for the duck-shooting, there is the bottle of ink we
got to fill our pens one stormy day last spring in the trout season,
when the downpour quenched the zeal even of Jonathan. In the pantry are
the jars of sugar and salt and cereals and tea and coffee and bacon; in
the kitchen are the oil stoves ready to light; in the dining-room are
the ashes of our last fire.

Contentedly I set about making tea and arranging the supper-table, while
Jonathan took a basket and pitcher and went off to a neighbor for eggs
and milk. We made a fire on the hearth, toasted bread over the embers,
and supped frugally but very cozily.

Afterwards came the setting of the alarm clock--a matter of critical
importance.

"What hour shall it be?" inquired Jonathan, his finger on the regulator.

"Whenever you think best," I answered cheerfully.

Now, as we both understood, I had no real intention of being literally
guided by what Jonathan thought best,--that would have been too
rash,--but it opened negotiations pleasantly to say so.

Jonathan, trying to be obliging against his better judgment, suggested,
"Well--six o'clock?"

But I refused any such tremendous concession, knowing that I should have
to bear the ignominy of it if the adventure proved unfortunate. "No, of
course not. Six is much too late. Anybody can get up at six."

"Well, then," he brightened; "say five?"

"Five," I meditated. "No, it's quite light at five. We ought to be out
there at daylight, you said."

Jonathan visibly expanded. He realized that I was behaving very