the work himself, but Felix, in his gloomy mood, would not answer him.
Oliver returned to the pool, and getting into the canoe, poled it up and
down the stream. It answered perfectly, and could be easily managed; the
defect was more apparent than real, for when a person sat in the canoe,
his weight seemed to bring it nearly level.

It was only when empty that it canted to one side. He came back again to
Felix, and pointed this out to him. The attempt was useless; the boat
might answer the purpose perfectly well, but it was not the boat Felix
had intended it to be. It did not come up to his ideal.

Oliver was now somewhat annoyed at Felix's sullen silence, so he drew
the canoe partly on shore, to prevent it from floating away, and then
left him to himself.

Nothing more was said about it for a day or two. Felix did not go near
the spot where he had worked so hard and so long, but on the Saturday
Philip came home as usual, and, as there was now no secret about the
canoe, went down to look at it with Oliver. They pushed it off, and
floated two or three miles down the stream, hauling it on the shore past
the fallen fir tree, and then, with a cord, towed it back again. The
canoe, with the exception of the trifling deficiency alluded to, was a
good one, and thoroughly serviceable.

They endeavoured again to restore Felix's opinion of it, and an idea
occurring to Philip, he said a capital plan would be to add an
outrigger, and so balance it perfectly. But though usually quick to
adopt ideas when they were good, in this case Felix was too much out of
conceit with himself. He would listen to nothing. Still, he could not
banish it from his mind, though now ashamed to return to it after so
obstinately refusing all suggestions. He wandered aimlessly about in the
woods, till one day he found himself in the path that led to Heron Bay.

Strolling to the shore of the great Lake, he sat down and watched a
vessel sailing afar off slowly before the east wind. The thought
presently occurred to him, that the addition of an outrigger in the
manner Philip had mentioned would enable him to carry a sail. The canoe
could not otherwise support a sail (unless a very small one merely for
going before the breeze), but with such a sail as the outrigger would
bear, he could venture much farther away from land, his voyage might be
much more extended, and his labour with the paddle lessened.

This filled him with fresh energy; he returned, and at o