loveliest and loneliest of wilderness lakes, the Babe's great thirst
for information seemed in a fair way to be satisfied. Young as he was,
and city-born, the lure of the wild had nevertheless already caught
him, and the information that he thirsted for so insatiably was all
about the furred or finned or feathered kindreds of the wild. And here
by Silverwater, alone with his Uncle Andy and big Bill Pringle, the
guide, his natural talent for asking questions was not so firmly
discouraged as it was at home.

But even thus early in this adventurous career, this fascinating and
never-ending quest of knowledge, the Babe found himself confronted by a
most difficult problem. He had to choose between authorities. He had
to select between information and information. He had to differentiate
for himself between what Bill told him and what his Uncle Andy told
him. He was a serious-minded child, who had already passed through
that most painful period of doubt as to Santa Claus and the Fairies,
and had not yet reached the period of certainty about everything. He
was capable of both belief and doubt. So, naturally, he had his
difficulties.

Bill certainly knew an astonishing lot about the creatures of the wild.
But also, like all guides who are worth their salt, he knew an
astonishing lot of things that weren't so. He had imagination, or he
would never have done for a guide. When he knew--which was not
often--that he did _not_ know a thing, he could put two and two
together and make it yield the most extraordinary results. He felt it
one of his first duties to be interesting. And above all, he felt it
his duty to be infallible. No one could be expected to have implicit
faith in a guide who was not infallible. He never acknowledged
insufficient information about anything whatever that pertained to the