if you only
held the end of your finger in the water!"

"Good enough!" said Jim. "Thanks, awfully--we'll be jolly glad. Come on,
Billy--trot out your frying-pan!"

Lunch began rather silently.

In their secret hearts the boys were rather annoyed with Norah.

"Why on earth," Jim reflected, "couldn't she have left the old chap
alone? The party was all right without him--we didn't want any one
else--least of all an odd oddity like this." And though the other boys
were loyal to Norah, she certainly suffered a fall in their estimation,
and was classed for the moment with the usual run of "girls who do rummy
things."

However, the Hermit was a man of penetration and soon realized the state
of the social barometer. His hosts, who did not look at all like quiet
boys, were eating their blackfish in perfect silence, save for polite
requests for bread or pepper, or the occasional courteous remark, "Chuck
us the salt!"

Accordingly the Hermit exerted himself to please, and it would really
have taken more than three crabby boys to resist him. He told the
drollest stories, which sent everyone into fits of laughter, although he
never laughed himself at all; and he talked about the bush, and told
them of the queer animals he saw--having, as he said, unusually good
opportunities for watching the bush inhabitants unseen. He knew where
the lyrebirds danced, and had often crept silently through the scrub
until he could command a view of the mound where these strange birds
strutted and danced, and mimicked the other birds with life-like
fidelity. He loved the birds very much, and never killed any of them,
even when a pair of thievish magpies attacked his larder and pecked a
damper into little bits when he was away fishing. Many of the birds were
tame with him now, he said; they would hop about the camp and let him
feed them; and he had a carpet snake that was quite a pet, which he
offered to show them--an offer that broke down the last tottering
barriers of the boys' reserve. Then there were his different methods of
trapping animals, some of which were strange even to Jim, who was a
trapper of much renown.

"Don't you get lonely sometimes?" Norah asked him.

The Hermit looked at her gravely.

"Sometimes," he said. "Now and then one feels that one would give
something to hear a human voice again, and to feel a friend's hand-grip.
Oh, there are times, Miss Norah, when I talk to myself--which is bad--or
yarn to old Turpentine, my s