window and introduced Field when he came along: "Mr.
Meadow, Cap'n Charner. I'm showing him bear-tracks and things around
the pond."

"How do you do, captain?" said Field. "Don't know me in the part of
Neptune, eh?"

"Oho!" said the captain, glancing aside from the wheel. "It's you, is
it? Where's your friend?--Trapp," he continued, "you'd better take
Mr. Meadow down and get Hess to dry his coat." They went down to the
little cabin, where a trim, plainly dressed, but very pretty girl was
busy with some sewing. She started and laughed when she saw Long and
how wet he was. Then she saw there was somebody else, and she blushed
a little.

"Mr. Meadow, Hess," and "Miss Hessie Charner, Meadow," introduced
Long; and he told her what the captain had bidden him.

The girl brought a coat of her father's for Field, and hung his up
to dry near the furnace, and the three chatted together till the boat
warped in to the wharf at her trip's end.

Long did not know how it was, but it happened constantly after that
that they fell in with the Wanita somewhere on her trip. He found that
accident pleasant enough at first, but somehow changed his mind before
long, and managed that they did not happen upon the boat the next day.
That afternoon Field had some business in Bee, and set off in that
direction, engaging to meet Long with traps and bear-bait at the
Hexagon Hotel the next morning. His business in Bee could not have
required much time, for when Long happened down at Leewell that
evening, Field was smoking with Captain Charner in the little cabin of
the Wanita, the captain's daughter sitting by with some sewing. Long
sat with them a while, but he would not smoke, and his conversation
could not be called brilliant or amusing. Field, on the other hand,
talked his best and was in the highest spirits. Long got up and went
away presently, with only a good-night to the captain.

One evening, a little later, two persons were looking out on the lake
and the dark hills beyond, and talking in low tones by the rail on the
lower deck of the Wanita as she lay at her wharf. A tall man passed
down along the shore, and went by without looking round. An hour
later Field was walking quickly along the shore-road in the moonlight,
crushing the gravel and whistling an air under his breath, when Long
came out of the shaded piece ahead and started past without any sign
of recognition.

On Thursday of that same week Field left Long at a point on the