The Watermelon decided from habit to get a better view of the lonely swimmer before he let his own presence become known. He slipped into the bushes and slowly wriggled his way to the little glade. The lake was bigger than at first appeared. It turned and twisted through the woods and was finally lost from view around a small promontory. The trees grew nearly to the water’s edge, a dense protecting wall to one who wished to sport in nature’s solitude, garbed in nature’s simple clothing. The lake was too far from the hotel to have been annexed as one of the attractions of that hostelry. All this the Watermelon noticed at a glance. He also noticed that the man swimming in the cool brown depths, with long easy strokes, was alone and a stranger. The Watermelon looked for the clothes and found them on a log, practically at his feet. In everything but color, they fulfilled his dream of what raiment should be like. Instead of the pale gray he rather favored, the suit was brown, a light brown, with a tiny green stripe, barely visible, intertwined with a faint suggestion of red, forming a harmonious whole that was vastly pleasing to the Watermelon’s æsthetic senses. In the matter of socks, he realized that the stranger had not taken the best advantage of his opportunity. Instead of being red or green to lend character to the delicate suggestion of those colors found in the suit, they were a soft dun brown. There was a tie of the same shade and a silk negligée shirt of white with pale green stripes. The owner was clearly a young man of rare taste, unhampered by a vexatious limitation of his pocket-book. He could be seen swimming slowly and luxuriously in the little lake, perfectly contented, unconscious that some one besides the woodpeckers and the squirrels was watching him. The swimmer’s strokes had quickened and the Watermelon perceived that he was swimming straight up the lake with the probable intention of rounding the promontory and exploring the farther lake. When he disappeared, the Watermelon quickly, carefully, gathered up the clothes and likewise disappeared. The swimmer was a big man and the clothes as good a fit as one could look for under the circumstances. They set off the Watermelon’s long, lean figure to perfection, and the hat, a soft and expensive panama, lent added distinction. The Watermelon removed the three dollars and ten cents and the keys from his own pockets, and making a bundle of his cast-off dollies, stuffed them out of sight in a hollow log, where later he could return and find them. It was just as well to leave the stranger a practical captive in nature’s depths until the beauty show was pulled off. After that event, he would return, and if the stranger was amenable to reason, he could have his good clothes back, but if he acted put out at all, for punishment he would have to accept the Watermelon’s glorious attire.