been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown against it
by the wind, perhaps."

"Ah," said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, "you can explain
everything."

"The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out after
him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he showed
me.

"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my
first thoughts took the form of "One of us must have done this thing, and
it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how impossible it
was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it.
That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could
have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for
a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and
densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with
insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear
actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the
clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his
mind--that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not
speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable
events--waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought,
expected very soon. This grew up in my mind intuitively--I hardly knew how.

I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed
in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various
depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind,
no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for
lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe
was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was
conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The
examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the
same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my intelligence which I
called my "reason." An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity,
just as some working e