o spare for
talk. Since they had the tent and one of the blanket-rolls and
sufficient food, Prime was for putting off the remaining double carry to
another day, but again Lucetta was adamant.

"If we do that we shall lose all day tomorrow," was the form her protest
took; "and now that we have started we had better keep on going."

"Oh, what is the frantic hurry?" Prime cut in. "You said your school
didn't begin until September. Haven't we the entire, unspoiled summer
ahead of us?"

"Clothes," she remarked briefly. "Yours may last all summer, but mine
won't--not if we have to go on tramping through the woods every day."

Prime's laugh was a shout. "We'll be blanket Indians, both of us, before
we get out of this. I feel that in my bones, too. But about the second
carry; we'll make it if you say so. It will at least give us a good
appetite for supper."

They made it, reaching the end of the six-mile doubling a short while
before the late sunset. Prime was all in, down, and out, but he would
not admit it until after the supper had been eaten and the shelter-tent
set up over its bed of spruce-tips. Then he let go with both hands.

"I'm dog-tired, and I am not ashamed to admit it," he confessed. "But
you--you look as fresh as a daisy. What are you made of--spring steel?"

"Not by any manner of means; but I wasn't going to be the first to say
anything. I feel as if I were slowly ossifying. I wouldn't walk another
mile to-night for a fortune."

Prime stretched himself lazily before the fire with his hands under his
head. "Luckily, you don't have to. You had better turn in and get all
the sleep that is coming to you. I'm going to hit the blankets after I
smoke another pinch of this horrible tobacco."

As he sat up to roll the pinch a rising wind began to swish through the
tree-tops. A little later there was a fitful play of lightning followed
by a muttering of distant thunder.

"That means rain, and you are going to get wet," said the young woman,
as she was preparing to creep under her canvas. An instant later a gusty
blast came down the river, threatening to scatter the fire. Prime sprang
up at once and began to take the necessary precautions against a
conflagration. In the midst of the haste-making he heard his companion
say: "We might drag the canoe up here and turn it over so that you could
have it for a shelter."

With the fire safely banked they went together to the river's edge to
carry out her suggestion. B