f the
country people. He inquired of a voluble fellow where he could
be best accommodated at Northumberland.

"Oh, stop at th' hotel, b' all means. They feed yeou tip top; high up,"
said he, "I've been ter dinner there w'en they've hed all o' seven
kinds er pie on ther table t'onct."

"Have they got apples and squash?" jokingly asked the Captain.

"Yeou kin jus' bet on thet," was the enthusiastic answer.

Just below Northumberland, which place he left at nine o'clock, he
encountered a dam and very rough water. The weather became squally, with
a cold and cutting snow beating into his face; but he plied the paddle
vigorously and made remarkable progress, reaching Lancaster at one
thirty o'clock. Countrymen whom he passed would stare at him and then
burst out into loud guffaws of laughter as though immensely tickled at
the idea of a man paddling down the river in a driving snow storm.

At length Paul began to feel the livelier motion of the water as he was
nearing Lunenburg, where the Fifteen Mile Falls begin. Wishing to enter
that dangerous stretch a fresh man, he pulled up for the night and
luckily found a hospitable farmer in the person of Mr. Frank Bell,
who entertained him handsomely until morning.

He was prepared for heavy work when he started early next day, and well
it was that he was fortified for the occasion, as the Fifteen Mile
Falls proved about as rough an experience as he had ever gone through.
At Holbrook's Bar, the last pitch of the falls, M'Indoe's Dam, Barnet
Pitch and other place, he encountered many dangers in the way of
whirling currents and jagged rocks. He suffered but a slight bruise in
the descent though his dress was cut and he was obliged to stop and
repair it at Lower Waterford where he remained over night. At a
little settlement above that village, someone in a small gathering on
the bank said:

"Hure comes that pesky swimmer aroun' th' bow, an' he's a cumin' like
forty."

"Who's a-comin'?" asked a broad shouldered Green Mountaineer. The very
thought of a man paddling down the river seemed to suggest some scheme
of the fakir or dodge of the showman to separate him from the coins that
jingled in his pocket. The old Vermonter, turning a quid of sassafras
from one corner of his mouth to the other, drawled, with all
impressiveness of a judge to whom some knotty law point had been
presented: "Wall, I wunder what he gits out'n this? He mus' be a da