One morning they took a boat at the head of the lake and rowed down toward a pond on the east side among the hills, where Long said the ducks came "so thick you couldn't see through 'em, and where the water was so shallow and the mud so deep that, when the ducks were shot, the Devil couldn't get 'em 'thout he had a dog." After a while a wind came swooping down on the quiet water through a dip in the hills, and nearly blew the skiff's bows out of water. The sleeping lake woke up, pitched and foamed, and beat upon the bows and dashed over the young men till they were nearly as wet as the waves themselves. Field was pulling to Long's stroke, the wind fluttering his hair in his eyes and the water running down his back, but he would not say anything till Long did. Presently Long looked round over his shoulder, and hailed, "I guess we'd best throw up and get a tow: I hear the Wanita coming down." Presently the little steamer came along and threw them a line. Long caught it and made it fast. They were nearly jerked out of the water or flung into it, and then went boiling along in the steamer's wake. A boat-hand drew in the line, and they climbed out, swaying and floundering through a cloud of spray, and all the passengers crowding back to see. They went forward and up on deck, and the captain spoke to Long from the pilot-house, calling him Trapp. Long talked to him through the window and introduced Field when he came along: "Mr. Meadow, Cap'n Charner. I'm showing him bear-tracks and things around the pond." "How do you do, captain?" said Field. "Don't know me in the part of Neptune, eh?" "Oho!" said the captain, glancing aside from the wheel. "It's you, is it? Where's your friend?--Trapp," he continued, "you'd better take Mr. Meadow down and get Hess to dry his coat." They went down to the little cabin, where a trim, plainly dressed, but very pretty girl was busy with some sewing. She started and laughed when she saw Long and how wet he was. Then she saw there was somebody else, and she blushed a little. "Mr. Meadow, Hess," and "Miss Hessie Charner, Meadow," introduced Long; and he told her what the captain had bidden him. The girl brought a coat of her father's for Field, and hung his up to dry near the furnace, and the three chatted together till the boat warped in to the wharf at her trip's end.