Thus do they and their kind pay homage to a divine day on a
fire-blue lake, amid the hush of the eternal hills. Lesser souls
may find themselves speaking in few and low-pitched words, under
the holy spell of such surroundings. But to loftier types of
holiday-seekers, the benignant silences of the wilderness are put
there by an all-wise Providence for the purpose of being
fractured by any racket denoting care-free merriment;--the louder
the merrier. There is nothing so racket-breeding as a perfect day
amid perfect scenery.

The four revelers had paddled down into the lake, on a day's
picnicking. They had come from far up the Ramapo river; beyond
Suffern. And the long downstream jaunt had made them hungry.
Wherefore, as they reached mid-lakes they began to inspect the
wooded shores for an attractive luncheon-site. And they found
what they sought.

A half-mile to southward, a gently rolling point of land pushed
out into the lake. It was smooth-shaven and emerald-bright. It
formed the lower end of a lawn; sloping gently downward, a
hundred yards or more, from a gray old house which nestled
happily among mighty oaks on a plateau at the low hill's summit.

The point (with its patch of beach-sand at the water's edge, and
with comfortable shade from a lakeside tree or so), promised an
ideal picnic-ground. The shaven grass not only offered fine
possibilities for an after-luncheon snooze; but was the most
convenient sort of place for the later strewing of greasy
newspapers and Japanese napkins and wooden platters and crusts
and chicken bones and the like.