little lake. It was solitary and silent, but for the weird
sounds of night birds and aquatic animals that frequented its reedy
margin, and a soft, silvery mist was just rising from its unruffled
surface, that gathered in a translucent veil against the dark forest
of the opposite shore. Its simple, serene and quiet beauty, under the
stars and rising moon, was not lost upon the poetic nature of Barton,
still heaving with the recent storm.

He ran his eye along the surface of the water, and discerned in the
shadow of the wood, near the island, a fourth of a mile distant, a
light, and below it the dark form of a boat. Placing his closed hands
to his lips, he blew a strong, clear, full whistle, with one or two
notes, and was answered by Theodore. At the landing near him was a
half-rotten canoe, partially filled with water, and near it was an old
paddle. Without a moment's thought, Barton pushed it into deep water,
springing into it as it glided away. He had not passed half the
distance to the other boat, when he discovered that it was filling.
With his usual rashness, he determined to reach his friends in it
by his own exertions, and without calling to them for aid, and by an
almost superhuman effort he drove on with his treacherous craft. The
ultimate danger was not much to a light and powerful swimmer, and he
plunged forward. The noise and commotion of forcing his waterlogged
canoe through the water attracted the attention of the party he
was approaching, but who had hardly appreciated his situation as he
lightly sprang from his nearly filled boat into their midst.

"Hullo, Bart! Why under the heavens did you risk that old log? Why
didn't you call to us to meet you?"

"Because," said Bart, excited by his effort and danger, "because to
myself I staked all my future on reaching you in that old hulk, and I
won. Had it sunk, I had made up my mind to go with her, and, like Mr.
Mantalini, in Dickens's last novel, 'become a body, a demnition moist
unpleasant body.'"

"What old wreck is it?" inquired Young, looking at the scarcely
perceptible craft that was sinking near them.

"It is the remains of the old canoe made by Thomas Ridgeley, in his
day, I think," said Jonah.

"Nothing of the sort," said Bart; "it is the remains of old Bullock's
'gundalow,' that has been sinking and swimming, like old John Adams
in the Revolution, these five years past. Don't let me think to-night,
Uncle Jonah, that anything from my father's han