.

Kildee plover flew chattering before the canoe while they were still
near land. Far above in the blue a bald-headed eagle sailed along. Lanse
chose to go out to the centre of the stream--Lanse never skirted the
edge of anything; reaching it, he turned southward, and they voyaged
onward for nearly an hour.

He did not appear disposed to begin his narrative immediately; and
Winthrop asked no questions. Every now and then each indulged in a
retrospective remark; but these remarks concerned themselves only with
the days of their boyhood, they brought up the old jokes, and called
each other by the old names. Winthrop, after a while, branching off a
little, suggested that this warm brown tide, winding softly through the
beautiful low green country, was something to remember--on a January
day, say, in a manufacturing town at the North, when a raw wind was
sweeping the streets, when the horse-cars were bumping along between
miniature hills of muddy ice, when all complexions were dubious and
harassed, and the constantly dropping flakes of soot from myriad
chimneys failed to convey a suggestion of warmth, but rather brought up
(to the initiated) a picture of chill half-heated bedrooms, where these
same harassed complexions must undergo more torture from soap and water
in the effort to remove the close-clinging marks of the "black snow."

"Oh, confound your manufacturing town!" Lanse answered.

"I can't; I'm a manufacturer myself," was Winthrop's response.

At length Lanse turned the canoe towards the western shore. A creek
emptied into the river at this point, a creek which had about the
breadth of the Thames at Westminster; Lanse entered the creek. Great
ragged nests of the fish-hawks crowned many of the trees here, making
them resemble a group of light-houses at the creek's mouth. They met an
old negro on a raft, who held up a rattlesnake which he seemed to think
they would admire. "Fibe foot en eight inch, boss, en ferteen rattles."

"That's African Joe," said Lanse. "I've already made his acquaintance;
he was born in Africa.--You old murderer, what do you want for showing
us that poor reptile you have put an end to?"

Old Joe, a marvel of negro old age, grinned as Lanse tossed him a
quarter. "'Gater, massa," he said, pointing.

It was a black lump like the end of a floating log,--an alligator
submerged all but that inch or two of head.

"That's the place I'm looking for, I think," said Lanse; "I was up here
yeste