oise to make a fool of me, Wilks?"

"O, Corry, you make me shudder with your villainous puns."

"That's nothing to what I heard once. There were some fellows camping,
and they had two tents and some dogs for deerhunting. As it was raining,
they let the hounds sleep in one of the tents, when one of the fellows
goes round and says: 'Shut down your curtains.' 'Were you telling them
that to keep the rain out?' asked one, when the rascal answered: 'To all
in tents and purp houses.' Wasn't that awful, now?"

The water was cold but pleasant on a hot day, and the swimmers enjoyed
striking out some distance from shore and then being washed in by the
homeward-bound waves. They sat, with their palms pressed down beside
them, on smooth ledges of rock, and let the breakers lap over them. The
lawyer was thinking it time to get out, when he saw Wilkinson back into
the waves with a scared face. "Are you going for another swim, Wilks, my
boy?" he asked. "Look behind you," whispered the schoolmaster. Coristine
looked, and was aware of three girls, truly rural, sitting on the bank
and apparently absorbed in contemplating the swimmers. "This is awful!"
he ejaculated, as he slid down into deep water; "Wilks, it's scare the
life out of them I must, or we'll never get back to our clothes. Now,
listen to me." Dipping his head once more under water till it dripped,
he let out a fearful sound, like "Gurrahow skrrr spat, you young
gurruls, an' if yeez don't travel home as fast as yer futs'll taake
yeez, it's I'll be afther yeez straight, och, garrahow skrr spat
whishtubbleubbleubble!" The rural maidens took to their heels and ran,
as Coristine swam into shore. In a minute the swimmers were into their
clothes and packs, and resumed their march, much refreshed by the cool
waters of the Georgian Bay.

"And where is it we're bound for now, Wilks?"

"For the abandoned shale-works at the foot of the Blue Mountains."

"Fwhat's that, as Jimmie Butler said about the owl?"

"The Utica formation, which crops out here, consists largely of
bituminous shales, that yield mineral oil to the extent of twenty
gallons to the ton. But, since the oil springs of the West have been in
operation, the usefulness of these shales is gone. The Indians seem to
have made large use of the shale, for a friend of mine found a hoe of
that material on an island in the Muskoka lakes. Being easily split and
worked, it was doubtless very acceptable to the metal wanting
aborigi