g of a white arm as she made the overhand
reach. Then he dutifully turned his back and gave his entire attention
to the firemaking.

When he looked again she had righted the canoe and was coming across
with it, swimming and pushing it ahead of her. At a little distance from
the shore she called to him: "Take it; it's all yours"--giving the
birch-bark a final shove. "I'll be with you in a few minutes." And with
that she turned off and swam away up-stream to her dressing-thicket.

Prime gave her time to disappear and then went to draw the canoe out on
the bank and to begin an inventory of the losses. Thanks to the care
they had taken in tying everything in, nothing was missing save the
paddles. Such food as was still in the original tin was undamaged, but
the meat was soaked and the flour and meal were soggy masses of paste.
Prime was dismayed. The small stock of potatoes would not last forever,
and neither would the canned vegetables. They were not yet backwoodsmen
enough to live upon meat alone; and another and crowning misfortune was
the loss of the salt.

Prime was lamenting over the wet salt-sack and trying to save some
little portion of the precious condiment when Lucetta came on the scene,
looking as bright and fresh as the proverbial field-flower after her
plunge and swim, and took over the culinary problem. Fortunately, they
still had the salt pork, and the pretty _cuisiniere_ issued her orders
promptly.

"Find some nice clean pieces of birch bark and spread this flour and
meal out so that it will dry before the fire," she directed; and while
he was doing that and hanging the blankets and tent canvas up to drip
and dry, she opened a tin of baked beans and made another of the
triumphant stews of jerked deer meat and potatoes seasoned with a bit
of the salt pork. Upon these two dishes they presently feasted royally,
making up for the three lost meals, and missing the bread only because
they didn't have it.

"I have settled one thing in my own mind," Prime declared, while he was
assiduously drying a leaf of the soaked tobacco for the after-dinner
smoke. "If I am ever cast away again, I'm going to make dead sure that I
have a Domestic Science expert for a fellow sufferer. Lucetta, you are
simply great when it comes to making something out of nothing. What are
we going to do with this flour-and-meal pudding?"

"We are going to dry it carefully and then grind it up again on a flat
stone and go on as before," was