It was still in early evening, with time and life heavy on his hands, when he remembered that the Doctor had sent him word to come to the pond that night. Taking his rifle by the muzzle, and throwing it across his shoulder, he plunged into the woods in a right line for the west shore of the pond, at about its midway. Through thick woods tangled with underbrush and laced with wild vines, down steep banks, over high hills and rocky precipices, across clearings and hairy brier patches, he took his way, and found relief in the physical exertions of which he was still capable. At last he stood on the margin of the forest and hill-embosomed waters of that lovely little lake. It was solitary and silent, but for the weird sounds of night birds and aquatic animals that frequented its reedy margin, and a soft, silvery mist was just rising from its unruffled surface, that gathered in a translucent veil against the dark forest of the opposite shore. Its simple, serene and quiet beauty, under the stars and rising moon, was not lost upon the poetic nature of Barton, still heaving with the recent storm. He ran his eye along the surface of the water, and discerned in the shadow of the wood, near the island, a fourth of a mile distant, a light, and below it the dark form of a boat. Placing his closed hands to his lips, he blew a strong, clear, full whistle, with one or two notes, and was answered by Theodore. At the landing near him was a half-rotten canoe, partially filled with water, and near it was an old paddle. Without a moment's thought, Barton pushed it into deep water, springing into it as it glided away. He had not passed half the distance to the other boat, when he discovered that it was filling. With his usual rashness, he determined to reach his friends in it by his own exertions, and without calling to them for aid, and by an almost superhuman effort he drove on with his treacherous craft. The ultimate danger was not much to a light and powerful swimmer, and he plunged forward. The noise and commotion of forcing his waterlogged canoe through the water attracted the attention of the party he was approaching, but who had hardly appreciated his situation as he lightly sprang from his nearly filled boat into their midst. "Hullo, Bart! Why under the heavens did you risk that old log? Why didn't you call to us to meet you?" "Because," said Bart, excited by his effort and danger, "because to myself I staked all my future on reaching you in that old hulk, and I won. Had it sunk, I had made up my mind to go with her, and, like Mr. Mantalini, in Dickens's last novel, 'become a body, a demnition moist unpleasant body.'" "What old wreck is it?" inquired Young, looking at the scarcely perceptible craft that was sinking near them. "It is the remains of the old canoe made by Thomas Ridgeley, in his day, I think," said Jonah.