not to sneeze that he's sure to bring out a thumping big one," he said
plaintively.

"Well, keep it back like a hero if your head bursts in the attempt," was
the reply with a muffled laugh. "When you know that the canoe is gliding
along somehow, but you can't hear a sound or feel a motion, and you
begin to wonder whether you're in the air or on water, flying or
floating, imagine that you're the ghost of some old Indian hunter who
used to jack for deer on Squaw Pond, and be stonily silent."

"Oh! I say, stop chaffing," whispered Neal impetuously. "You're enough
to make a fellow feel creepy before ever he starts. I could bear the
worst racket on earth better than a dead quiet."

This dialogue was exchanged in low but excited voices between a young
man of about one and twenty, and a lad who was apparently five years his
junior, while they waded knee-deep in water among the long, rank grasses
and circular pads of water-lilies which border the banks of Squaw Pond,
a small lake in the forest region of northern Maine.

The hour was somewhere about eleven o'clock. The night was intensely
still, without a zephyr stirring among the trees, and of that wavering
darkness caused by a half-clouded moon. On the black and green water
close to the bank rocked a light birch-bark canoe, a ticklish craft,
which a puff might overturn. The young man who had urged the necessity
for silence was groping round it, fumbling with the sharp bow, in which
he fixed a short pole or "jack-staff," with some object--at present no
one could discern what--on top.

"There, I've got the jack rigged up!" he whispered presently. "Step in