Bell; "now we must have
choruses, many of them!"

And lying close together, the paddles stretched across from one canoe to
another, the Merryweathers sang, to Jack's accompaniment, song after
song in chorus: German student songs, with merry refrain of "_vivallera
la_" and "_juch heira sa sa!_" Scottish ballads and quaint old Highland
boat-songs; till Mr. Merryweather declared that it was time to go home.

So home they went, down the moonglade once more, across the glimmering
floor of the lake, singing as they went; till, twinkling through the
fringe of trees, they saw the lights of the Camp, and the long outline
of the float, and the boats swinging at their moorings.

CHAPTER IV.

AFTER THE PICNIC

"AND what comes next on the programme?" asked the Chief.

"Coma, I should say," replied Colonel Ferrers. "After that watermelon, I
see nothing else for it. It's my avowed belief that my nephew there
could not stir if his life depended on it; it stands to reason. The boy
has eaten more than his own weight. Monstrous!"

"What a frightful calumny!" cried Jack, laughing. "Really, Uncle Tom,
you cannot expect me to sit still under that."

He rose lightly to his feet, and grasping a branch of the tree above his
head, drew himself up, and after kicking his long legs several times in
the air, finally twisted them round the branch, and in another moment
had disappeared in the shadowy depths of the great hemlock.

"Oh! I say!" his voice floated down. "This is a great tree to climb.
You'd better come up, Uncle Tom, if you feel the slightest symptoms of
coma."

The other lads did not wait to be invited, but flung themselves at the
tree, and were soon lost to sight, though not to sound. Colonel Ferrers
turned to his hostess with a frown which tried hard not to turn into a
smile.

"Now, did you ever hear of such impudence as that?" he asked. "These
young fellows of to-day are the most impudent scoundrels I ever came
across. Time was, though, when we could have climbed a tree with the
best of them; eh, Merryweather?"

"I have no doubt you could now, Colonel," said his host, "if you were
put to it; but I confess it is more comfortable under a tree than in
it, nowadays, especially after a Gargantuan feast like this."

It had indeed been a great picnic. The boys, while on a tramp, had
discovered a grove of pines and hemlocks, huge old trees, which had
unaccountably escaped the woodman's axe. The pines shot up straight a