Cupid of Campion. Finn Francis James

– well hardly anybody. Where are we anyhow?”

      “We’re on the Mississippi River,” returned the other guardedly.

      “Oh, thank you ever so much. I really thought we were breasting the billows of the Atlantic.”

      Meanwhile, they had drawn within a few feet of the shore, on which Clarence now cast his eyes. On a sloping beach in a grove surrounded by cottonwoods blazed a ruddy fire. Standing about it but with their eyes and attention fixed upon the two swimmers was a group consisting of a man a little beyond middle age, a woman, apparently his wife, a younger woman, a boy a trifle older and larger than Clarence, a girl of twelve, and five or six little children. In the camp-fire’s light Clarence perceived that they were, taking them all in all, swarthy, black-haired, clad like civilized people, and yet in that indescribable wild way of which gypsies possess the secret.

      “Come on,” said the man, as the boat touched the shore.

      “Excuse me,” said Clarence politely, “but I’m not dressed to meet visitors. The water is fine anyway; and it’s not near so dangerous as it’s cracked up to be. Can’t you get a fellow at least a pair of trousers?”

      “You’ll stay here, will you?”

      “I certainly will,” answered the youth, turning on his back and floating. “I’ve had enough of being out on the Mississippi to last me for several weeks at the very least. Go on, there’s a good fellow, – and get me something to put on.”

      With a not ill-natured grunt of assent, the man walked up the sloping bank. As he passed the watchful group he uttered a few words; whereupon the larger gypsy boy came down to the shore and fixed a watchful eye upon the bather, while the others broke up and gave themselves to various occupations. Clarence’s rescuer went on beyond the fire, where two tents lay pitched beside a closed wagon – a prairie schooner on a small scale. After some search in which the young woman assisted him, he issued from the larger tent with a pair of frayed khaki trousers and an old calico shirt.