'No.'

'Do you start on to-morrow?'

'Probably; by that time the waves and "the sessions of sweet silent
thought" will have driven me distracted between them.'

'I will stay to supper, I think,' said the shape, unbending still
farther, and stepping out of the skiff.

'Deeds before words then,' replied Waring, starting back towards a
tree where his game-bag and knapsack were standing. When he returned
the skiff had disappeared; but the shape was warming its moccassined
feet in a very human sort of way. They cooked and eat with the
appetites of the wilderness, and grew sociable after a fashion. The
shape's name was Fog, Amos Fog, or old Fog, a fisherman and a hunter
among the islands farther to the south; he had come inshore to see
what that fire meant, no person having camped there in fifteen long
years.

'You have been here all that time, then?'

'Off and on, off and on; I live a wandering life,' replied old Fog;
and then, with the large curiosity that solitude begets, he turned the
conversation back towards the other and his story.

The other, not unwilling to tell his adventures, began readily; and
the old man listened, smoking meanwhile a second pipe produced from
the compact stores in the knapsack. In the web of encounters and
escapes, he placed his little questions now and then; no, Waring had