Late in the afternoon our party gathered upon the small dock and I understood that our host now returned from his trouting. Along the shore of the lake he came, propelled in a native canoe by a hairy backwoods person quite wretchedly gotten up, even for a wilderness. Our host himself, I was quick to observe, was vogue to the last detail, with a sense of dress and equipment that can never be acquired, having to be born in one. As he stepped from his frail craft I saw that he was rather slight of stature, dark, with slender moustaches, a finely sensitive nose, and eyes of an almost austere repose. That he had much of the real manner was at once apparent. He greeted the Flouds and his own family with just that faint touch of easy superiority which would stamp him to the trained eye as one that really mattered. Mrs. Effie beckoned me to the group. “Let Ruggles take your things--Cousin Egbert’s man,” she was saying. After a startled glance at Cousin Egbert, our host turned to regard me with flattering interest for a moment, then transferred to me his oddments of fishing machinery: his rod, his creel, his luncheon hamper, landing net, small scales, ointment for warding off midges, a jar of cold cream, a case containing smoked glasses, a rolled map, a camera, a book of flies. As I was stowing these he explained that his sport had been wretched; no fish had been hooked because his guide had not known where to find them. I here glanced at the backwoods person referred to and at once did not like the look in his eyes. He winked swiftly at Cousin Egbert, who coughed rather formally. “Let Ruggles help you to change,” continued Mrs. Effie. “He’s awfully handy. Poor Cousin Egbert is perfectly helpless now without him.” So I followed our host to his own detached hut, though feeling a bit queer at being passed about in this manner, I mean to say, as if I were a basket of fruit. Yet I found it a grateful change to be serving one who knew our respective places and what I should do for him. His manner of speech, also, was less barbarous than that of the others, suggesting that he might have lived among our own people a fortnight or so and have tried earnestly to correct his deficiencies. In fact he remarked to me after a bit: “I fancy I talk rather like one of yourselves, what?” and was pleased as Punch when I assured him that I had observed this. He questioned me at length regarding my association with the Honourable George, and the houses at which we would have stayed, being immensely particular about names and titles. “You’ll find us vastly different here,” he said with a sigh, as I held his coat for him. “Crude, I may say. In truth, Red Gap, where my interests largely confine me, is a town of impossible persons. You’ll see in no time what I mean.” “I can already imagine it, sir,” I said sympathetically. “It’s not for want of example,” he added. “Scores of times I show them better ways, but they’re eaten up with commercialism--money-grubbing.”