it any good."

"'The ruling passion strong in death,'" Prime quoted with good-natured
sarcasm. "You are a born cook. Let's try it."

They tried it and merely succeeded in making the product still more
brittle. They then tried adding a little grease from the fat pork to
make it more flexible, and that ruined it completely.

"Two civilized brains, college-trained to a piano-polish finish, and not
a single workable idea between them," Prime derided. "It's
humiliating--disgusting!"

"The brains are still available," asserted the undaunted one. "Go and
find some pine pitch and we'll mix it with the spruce."

This experiment promised better success. A gluey mixture resulted that
stuck, not only to the canoe body and the patch, but to their fingers
and to everything it touched. Inventing still further, they contrived a
rude clamp to hold the patch in place while it was drying, if by good
hap the glue would consent to dry at all; and with the new paddles
whittled and scraped into shape, there was nothing to do but to wait
upon the drying process.

Prime spent the afternoon fishing, with the tackle found in one of the
gun-cases, and was lucky enough to accumulate a noble string of trout.
Lucetta would not say what she was going to do, merely hinting that
Prime's absence until supper-time would be a boon. Only the buzzard
swinging in slow circles overhead could have told tales of the doing
after the young woman had obtained her meed of solitude in the little
glade, and possibly the buzzard had seen a sufficient number of
blanketed women washing clothes at a river brink not to be unduly
stirred at the sight.

Later, Prime came in to exhibit his string of fish with true sportsman's
pride, and again they feasted royally, forgetting their late
tribulations, and looking forward half-regretfully to a resumption of
their journey on the morrow.

"It is astonishing how rapidly one can revert to the cave-man type," was
Prime's phrasing of the regret. "I have been a person of pavements and
cement walks all my life, as I suppose you have--of the paved streets
and all that they stand for. Yet I shall go back to them with something
like reluctance. Shan't you?"

She did not reply to the direct question.

"You speak as if you had some assurance that we are approaching the
pavements. Have you?"

"A bare hint. I fished along the river for about a mile down-stream,
spying out the land--or the water--as I went, for future reference. W