e, your men with edged tools took the trouble to cut down a
big tree like that, and not make any use of so much valuable timber?"

Rube shrugged his shoulders.

"Now you're askin' me a conundrum I can't answer," he said.

"No," returned Kiddie; "because you've got hold of the wrong idea.
That tree wasn't felled by any axe. It grew at the edge of the lake,
where the ground was soft and moist. It was blown down in some storm
or hurricane, and fell into the water. Gradually th' roots an'
branches broke off, and after a long while--many years, mebbe--the bare
trunk floated off. It drifted about like an iceberg or a derelict
ship--drifted an' drifted until it became water-logged an' so heavy
that it sank t' th' bottom, where it still lies. It was just an
ordinary process of Nature."

Rube was silent for many moments.

"Thar ain't no trippin' you up, Kiddie," he said at length. "I made
certain sure I had you that time."

"Wait a bit," pursued Kiddie; "I'll show you something else." He
paddled farther out in the lake, taking his bearings by well-remembered
landmarks. "Now look down through the water," he instructed, when
after many pauses, he at last drew in his paddle. "What d'ye see?"

Rube leant over and searched the depths.

"Not much," he answered. "I c'n see the bottom, sure--stones, gravel,
swayin' weeds. Hold hard, though. Them stones didn't grow there.
Guess they're too reg'lar. I c'n make out a ring of 'em."

"Yes," said Kiddie. "So c'n I. Some queer that they should be
arranged in a circle that way, ain't it? Are you able t' figure it
out?"

Rube pondered deeply, frequently looking down at the stones so
precisely placed in a ring at the bottom of the lake.

"They sure never come there on their own account, like the tree," he
decided. "Looks as if human hands had put em' that way, an' I've got a
idea, Kiddie. It's just this. Centuries an' centuries ago, this yer
lake wasn't a lake at all, but dry land."

"Well?" Kiddie smiled. "That's possible."

"And," continued Rube, "when it was dry land, a tribe of what you call
prehistoric men lived here. They was pagans--sun worshippers, an'
such. They built the stones in a circle as a kinder temple, same's
them chaps you told me of that built Stonehenge. What? Ain't that a
cute idea of mine?"

"I allow th' idea's cute," conceded Kiddie. "But it ain't an
explanation. It's too far-fetched altogether, an' it contradicts the
theory that