eath after the runaway canoe had
been safely beached on the shore of an eddy and they had tottered
carefully out of it to drag it still higher upon the shelving bank.

"My heavens!" he panted, throwing himself down to gasp at leisure. "I
wouldn't go through that again for a farm in Paradise! Weren't you
scared stiff?"

"I certainly was," was the frank admission. The young woman had taken
her characteristic attitude, sitting down with her chin propped in her
hands.

"But, just the same, you didn't forget to paddle!" Prime exulted. "You
are a comrade, right, Lucetta! It's a thousand pities you aren't a man!"

"Isn't it?" she murmured, without turning her head.

"Do you know--I was simply paralyzed at the thought of what would happen
if we should upset--not so much at the thought of what would be certain
to happen to me, but on your account."

"The protective instinct," she remarked; "it is like a good many other
things which we have outgrown--or are outgrowing--quite useless, but
stubbornly persistent."

"You mean that you don't need it?"

"I haven't needed it yet, have I?"

"No," he admitted soberly. "So far, you have had the nerve, and more
than your share of the physique."

"I have had better training, perhaps," she offered, as if willing to
make it easier for him. "A little farther along you will begin to
develop, while I shall stand still."

But Prime would not let it rest at that.

"I have always maintained that most women have a finer nerve, and finer
courage, than most men; I am speaking now of the civilized average. You
are proving my theory, and I owe you something. But to get back to
things present; doesn't it occur to you that we have gotten ourselves
into a rather awkward mess?"

"It does, indeed. We must be miles from anything to eat, and if you know
of any way to take this canoe up-stream I wish you would tell me; I
don't."

"It will be by main strength and awkwardness, as the Irishman played the
cornet, if we do it at all," Prime decided.

"And if, in the meantime, the owners come back and find it gone----"

Prime got up stiffly. "I have a feeling that they haven't come back yet,
and it is growing fast into a feeling that they are not going to come
back at all. Shall we try a towing stunt?"

They tried it, though they had no towline and were reduced to the
necessity of dragging the canoe along in the shallows, each with a hand
on the gunwale. This did not answer very well, and after f