rongest in him. It often is in his type."

"A-ah, indeed! So you study types up here, do you?"

"Yes. Uncle makes it so interesting. You see, he got used to teaching
stupid people when he was a professor in his college. I'm dreadfully
stupid about books, though I do my best. But I love living things; and
the books about animals, and races, are charming. When they're true,
that is. Often they're not. There's one book on squirrels uncle keeps
as a curiosity, to show how little the writer knew about them. And the
pictures are no more like squirrels than--than they are like me."

"A-ah," said the listener, again. "That explains."

"I don't know what you mean. No matter. It's the old stupidity, I
suppose. How did you get lost?"

"The same prevailing stupidity," he laughed. "Though I didn't realize
it for that quality. Just thought I was smart, you know--conceit.
I--I--well, I didn't get on so very well at the lumber camp I'd
joined. I wasn't used to work of that sort and there didn't seem
to be room, even in the woods, for a greenhorn. I thought it was
easy enough. I could find my way anywhere, in any wilderness,
with my outfit. I'd brought that along, or bought it after I left
civilization; so one night I left, set out to paddle my own canoe. I
paddled it into the rapids, what those fellows called rips, and they
ripped me to ruin. Upset, lost all my kit, tried to find my way back,
wandered and walked forever and ever, it seemed to me, and--you know
the rest."

"But I do not. Did you keep hallooing all that long time? or how did
it happen we heard you?"

"I was in a rocky place when that tornado came and it was near the
water. I had just sense enough left to know they could protect me and
crept under them. Oh! that was awful--awful!"

"It must have been, but I was so deep in our cave that I heard but
little of it. Uncle and Angelique thought I was out in it and lost.
They suffered about it, and uncle tried to make a fire and was sick.
We had just got home when we heard you."

"After the storm I crawled out and I saw you in the boat. You seemed
to have come right out of the earth and I shouted, or tried to. I kept
on shouting, even after you were out of sight and then I got
discouraged and tried once more to find a road out."

"I was singing so loud I suppose I didn't hear, at first. I'm so
sorry. But it's all right now. You're safe, and some way will be found
to get you to your home, or that lumber camp, if you'd