rked drily. "But take your choice. The lake's a short cut right
enough, only I wouldn't say where _to_--in my crazy old birchbark this
kind of a blowing-up evening!"

That, and a few more things he said as he squinted a weather-wise eye on
the lake, came back to me as I fought his old canoe through the water.
And fighting it was, mind you, for the spray hid the rocks I knew, and
the wind shoved me back on the ones I didn't know. Also the canoe was
leaking till she was dead logy, and the gusts were so fierce I could not
stop paddling to bail her. The short, vicious seas that snapped at me
five ways at once were the color of lead and felt as heavy as cold
molasses. But, for all that, crossing Lac Tremblant was saving me
twenty-two miles on my feet, and I was not wasting any dissatisfaction
on the traverse. Only, as I shoved the canoe forward, I was nearer to
being played out, from one thing on top of another, than ever I was in
my life. I pretended the paddle that began to hang in spite of me was
only heavy with freezing spray and that the dead ache in my back was a
kink. But I had to put every ounce there was in my six feet of weary
bones into lightning-change wrenches to hold the old canoe head on to
the splattering seas and keep her from swamping. I was very near to
thinking I had been a fool not to have stayed with Billy Jones,--when I
was suddenly aware of absolute, utter calm in the air that felt as warm
on my face as if I'd gone into a house; of tranquil water under the
forefoot of the canoe that had jumped forward under me as the resistance
of the wind ceased; and of the lake shore--dark, featureless,
silent--within twenty feet of me. I was across Lac Tremblant and in the
shelter of the La Chance shore!

There is no good in denying that for five minutes all I did was to sit
back and breathe. Then I lit my pipe, that was dry because it was inside
my shirt; bailed the unnecessary water out of the canoe and the
immediate neighborhood of my legs; and, without meaning to, turned a
casual eye on the shore at my right hand.

It might have been because I was tired, but that shore struck me as if I
had never seen it before; and on a November evening it was not an
inviting prospect. Bush and bush, and more bush, grew down to the very
verge of the water in a mass that spoke of heavy swamp and no landing.
Behind that, I knew, was rising land, country rock, and again swamp and
more swamp,--and all of it harsh, ugly, and inho