e is a sick man. You'll go back,
won't you?"

"Yes. I'm going back. Not because you ask me, though."

"I don't care why--only go."

"I'm not going into the show business."

Adrian smiled. "Of course you're not. You'll never have money enough.
It would cost lots."

"'Tisn't that. 'Twas the dream. That was sent me. All them animals in
black paint, and the blue herons without any heads, and---- My mother
came for me, last night."

"I heartily wish you could go to her this minute! She's superstitious
enough, in all conscience, yet she has the happy faculty of keeping
her lugubrious son in subjection."

Whenever Pierre became particularly depressing the other would rattle
off as many of the longest words as occurred to him. They had the
effect of diverting his comrade's thoughts.

Then they pulled on again, nor did anything disastrous happen to
further hinder their progress. The food did not give out, for they
lived mostly upon berries, having neither time nor desire to stop and
cook their remnant of beans. When they were especially tired Pierre
lighted a fire and made a bucket of hemlock tea, but Adrian found cold
water preferable to this decoction; and, in fact, they were much
nearer Donovan's, that first settlement in the wilderness, than even
Pierre had suspected.

Their last portage was made--an easy one, there being nothing but
themselves and the canoe to carry--and they came to a big dead water
where they had looked to find another running stream; but had no
sooner sighted it than their ears were greeted by the laughter of
loons, which threw up their legs and dived beneath the surface in that
absurd manner which Adrian always found amusing.

"Bad luck, again!" cried Pierre, instantly, "never hear a loon
but----"

"But you see a house! Look, look! Donovan's, or somebody's, no matter
whose! A house, a house!"

There, indeed, it lay; a goodly farmstead, with its substantial
cabins, its outbuildings, its groups of cattle on the cleared land,
and--yes, yes, its moving human beings, and what seemed oddest still,
its teams of horses.

Even Pierre was silent, and tears sprang to the eyes of both lads as
they gazed. Until that moment neither had fully realized how lonely
and desolate had been their situation.

"Now for it! It's a biggish lake and we're pretty tired! But that
means rest, plenty to eat, people--everything."

Their rudely built canoe was almost useless when they beached it at
last on Donovan