"With luncheon in?" asks Mary. "Empty," I say. So we start. I have already said that Lagunita is a pretty little lake. It lies just under the first of the foothills that rise ridge after ridge into the forested mountains that separate us from the ocean. Indeed, it is on the first low step up from the valley floor, and from its enclosing bank or shore one gets a good view of the level, reaching valley thickly set with live-oak trees and houses and fields. Around the little lake have grown up pines, willows and other beautiful trees, and at one side a tiny stream comes in during the wet season. There is no regular outlet, but the water which usually begins to come in about November keeps filling the shallow bowl of the lake higher and higher until by spring it is nearly bank full and may even overflow. Then as the long dry summer season sets in, the level of the water grows lower and lower until in August or September there is only left a small muddy puddle crammed with surprised and despairing little fishes and salamanders and water-beetles and the like, who are not at all accustomed to such behavior on the part of a lake. And then a few days later they are all gasping their last breaths there together on the scum-covered, waterless bottom. But when Lagunita is really a lake, it is a very pretty one, and Mary and I love to go there and sit on the bank under the willows near the horse paddocks and watch the college boys rowing about in their graceful, narrow, long-oared shells. These swift-darting boats look like great water-skaters, only white instead of black. You know the long-legged, active water-skaters or water-striders that skim about over the surface of ponds or quiet backwater pools in streams in summer time? So Mary and I went to Lagunita with our rake and tin lunch-pail to hunt for dragons. No shining armor; no great two-handed sword; no cap of invisibility. Just a rake and a tin lunch-pail. "Where, Mary, do you think is the likeliest place for the dragon?" I ask. Mary answers promptly, "There at the foot of the steep stony bank where the big willow-tree hangs over." We go there. I grasp my rake firmly with both hands. I reach far out over the shallow water. Then I beat the rake suddenly down through the water to the bottom, and with a quick strong pull I drag it out, raking out with it a great mass of oozy mud and matted leaves. I drag this well up on shore, and both Mary and I flop down on our knees and begin pawing about in it. Suddenly Mary calls out, "I've got one," and holds up in her fingers an extraordinary, kicking, twisting creature with six legs, a big head, and a thick, ugly body on which seem to be the beginnings of several fins or wings. It has, this creature, two great staring eyes, and stout, sharp-pointed spines stick out from various parts of the body. "Put him in the lunch-pail," I shout. I had already filled it half-full of water from the lake.