le as I tell ye or take in yer paddle an' set quiet. _I'm_
runnin' this 'ere canoe."

Babcock took in his paddle, cursing bitterly.

"A woodchuck! A measly woodchuck!" he shouted, with unutterable
contempt expressed in every word. "I know'd ye was a fool, Chris
McKeen, but I didn't know ye was so many kinds of a mush-head of a
fool!"

"Course it's a woodchuck!" agreed Chris, surging on his paddle. "Do ye
think I'd let the leetle critter go down the 'Trough,' jest so's ye
could git your bacon an' tea an hour sooner? I always did like
woodchucks, anyways."

"I'll take it out o' yer hide fer this when we git ashore; you wait!"
stormed Babcock, courageously. He knew it would be some time before
they could get ashore, and so he would have a chance to forget his
threat.

[Illustration: "'It's--Mandy Ann!'"]

"That's all right, Mart!" assented McKeen. "My hide'll be all here
waitin' on ye. But fer now you jest git ready to do ez I tell ye, an'
don't let the canoe bump ez we come up alongside the bateau. It's
goin' to be a mite resky, in this sea, gittin' hold of the leetle
critter. I'm goin' to take it home for Mandy Ann."

As the canoe swept down upon the swooping and staggering bateau,
Babcock put out his paddle in readiness to fend or catch as he might
be directed. A moment later Chris ran the canoe past and brought her
up dexterously under the lee of the high-walled craft. Babcock caught
her with a firm grip, at the same time holding her off with the
paddle, and glanced in, while Chris's eyes were still occupied. His
dark face went white as cotton.

"My God, Chris! Forgive me! I didn't know!" he groaned.

"It's--Mandy Ann!" exclaimed her father, in a hushed voice, climbing
into the bateau and catching the child into his arms.

From Buck to Bear and Back

The sunny, weather-beaten, comfortable little house, with its grey
sheds and low grey barn half enclosing its bright, untidy farmyard,
stood on the top of the open hill, where every sweet forest wind could
blow over it night and day.

Fields of oats, buckwheat, and potatoes came up all about it over the
slopes of the hill; and its only garden was a spacious patch of
cabbages and "garden sass" three or four hundred yards down toward the
edge of the forest, where a pocket of rich black loam had specially
invited an experiment in horticulture.

Like most backwoods farmers, Sam Coxen had been wont to look with
large scorn on such petty interests as ga