think--did you think it really was an otter?"

"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"

"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed--so _much_
bigger than an otter."

"The sunset as you looked upstream magnified it, or something," I
replied.

He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with
other thoughts.

"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.

"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose
you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat----"

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again
of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the
expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on
with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence.
Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the
smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.

"I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that
thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man.
The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the water."

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was