Tish found a pole for the purpose on the beach and set to work, while Aggie and I prepared several hooks and lines. The fish were jumping busily, and it seemed likely we should have more than we could do to haul them in.
The experiment, however, failed entirely, for not a single worm appeared. Tish laid it to the fact that it was very late and that the worms were probably settled down for the night. It may have been that, or it may have been the wrong kind of wood.
The mysterious happening was this: We rose quite early because the tepee did not seem to be well anchored and fell down on us at daybreak. Tish went down to the beach to examine the lines that had been out all night, and found nothing. She was returning rather dispirited to tell us that it would be rabbit again for breakfast, when she saw lying on a flat stone half a dozen beautiful fish, one or two still gasping, in our lost kettle!
Tish said she stood there, opening and shutting her mouth like the fish. Then she gave a whoop and we came running. At first we thought they might have been jumping and leaped out on to the beach by accident, but, as Tish said, they would hardly have landed all together and into a kettle that had been lost for two nights and a day. The queer thing was that they had not been caught with a hook at all. They hadn't a mark on them.
We were so hungry that we ate every one of them for breakfast. It was only when we had eaten, and were sitting gorged and not caring whether the tent was set up again or not, that we fell to wondering about the fish. Tish fancied it might have been the driver of the spring wagon, but decided he'd have sold us the fish at thirty cents a pound live weight.
All day long we watched for a sign of our benefactor, but we saw nothing. Tish set up more rabbit snares; not that she wanted rabbits, but it had become a mania with her, and there were so many of them that as they grew accustomed to us they sat round our camp in a ring and criticized our housekeeping. She thought if she got a good many skins she could have a fur robe made for her automobile. As a matter of fact she found another use for them.
It was that night, then, that we were sitting round the camp-fire on stones that we had brought up from the beach. We had seen nothing more of the bear, and if we had been asked we should have said that the nearest human being was twenty-five miles away.
Suddenly a voice came out of the woods just behind us, a man's voice.
"Please don't be alarmed," said the voice. "But may I have a little of your fire? Mine has gone out again."
"G-g-g-good gracious!" said Aggie. "T-Tish, get your revolver!"
This was for effect. Tish had no revolver.
All of us had turned and were staring into the woods behind, but we could see no one. After Aggie's speech about the revolver it was some time before the voice spoke again.
"Never mind, Aggie," Tish observed, very loud. "The revolver is here and loaded—as nice a little thirty-six as any one needs here in the woods."
She said afterward that she knew all the time there was no thirty-six caliber revolver, but in the excitement she got it mixed with her bust measure. Having replied to Aggie, Tish then turned in the direction of the voice.
"Don't skulk back there," she called. "Come out, where we can see you. If you look reliable, we'll give you some fire, of course."
There was another pause, as if the stranger were hesitating. Then:—
"I think I'd better not," he said with reluctance in his voice. "Can't you toss a brand this way?"
By that time we had grown accustomed to the darkness, and I thought I could see in the shadow of a tree a lightish figure. Aggie saw it at the same instant and clutched my arm.
"Lizzie!" she gasped.
It was at that moment that Tish tossed the brand. It fell far short, but her movement caught the stranger unawares. He ducked behind the tree, but the flare of light had caught him. With the exception of what looked like a pair of bathing-trunks he was as bare as my hand!
There was a sort of astonished silence. Then the voice called out:—"Why in the world didn't you warn me?" it said, aggrieved. "I didn't know you were going to throw the blamed thing."
We had all turned our backs at once and Tish's face was awful.
"Take it and go," she said, without turning. "Take it and go."
From the crackling of leaves and twigs we judged that he had come out and got the brand, and when he spoke again it was from farther back in the woods.
"You know," he said, "I don't like this any more than you do. I've got forty-two mosquito bites on my left arm."
He waited, as if for a reply; but getting none he evidently retreated. The sound of rustling leaves and crackling twigs grew fainter, fainter still, died away altogether. We turned then with one accord and gazed through the dark arches of the forest. A glowing star was retreating there—a smouldering fire, that seemed to move slowly and with an appearance of dejection.
It was the second time Aggie and I had seen fire thus carried through the wood; but whereas about the kettle there had been a glow and radiance that was almost triumphant, the brand we now watched seemed smouldering, dejected, ashamed. Even Tish felt it.
"The wretch!" she exclaimed. "Daring to come here like that! No wonder he's ashamed."
But Aggie, who is very romantic, sat staring after the distant torch.
"Mr. Wiggins suffered so from mosquitoes," she said softly.
IV
The next morning we found more fish awaiting us, and on the smooth sand of the beach was a message written with a stick:—
If you will leave a wire hairpin or two on this stone I can get bigger fish. What do you mean to do with all those rabbit skins?
(Signed) P.
Tish was touched by the fish, I think. She smoothed off the sand carefully and wrote a reply:—
Here are the hairpins. Thank you. Do you want the rabbit skins?
L.C.
All day we were in a state of expectancy. The mosquitoes were very bad, and had it not been for the excitement of the P—— person I should have given up and gone home. I wanted mashed potatoes and lima beans with butter dressing, and a cup of hot tea, and muffins, and ice—in fact, I cannot think of anything I did not want, except rabbits and fish and puffballs and such blackberries as the birds did not fancy. Although we were well enough—almost too well—the better I felt the hungrier I got.
Tish thought the time had now come to rest and invite our souls. She set the example that day by going out on a flat rock in the lake and preparing to think all the things she'd been waiting most of her life to consider.
"I am ready to form my own opinions about some things," she said. "I realize now that all my life the newspapers and stupid people and books have formed my opinions. Now I'm going to think along my own lines. Is there another life after this? Do I really desire the suffrage? Why am I a Baptist?"
Aggie said she would like to invite her soul that day also, not to form any opinions,—Tish always does that for her,—but she had to get some clothes in September and she might as well think them out.
So it happened that I was alone when I met the P—— person's young woman.
I had intended to wander only a short way along the trail, but after I had gone a mile or two it occurred to me as likely that the spring-wagon driver would come back that way before long out of curiosity,