Fessenden shot his canoe round a bend, and entered a long water-pass, irregular, half-choked with reeds and swamp, dark from the forest on the slopes of the gorge. It led to another lake, the second in a long chain of lakes great and small, on many of which some farmer had made his clearing and erected his monstrosities. But the gorge was long, and the next lake too wild and rocky to invite the attentions of man. Fessenden could paddle far, and fancy himself as alone in the great Adirondack wilderness as the first Red Indian. From the day when Mrs. Nettlebeck had allowed him to run unattended, much of his time had been spent apart. The nearest neighbor lived three miles away, on the farm where with several other boys he had attended school of a sort for four months in the year. The boys were kept busy at other times, and only sought him out when, like himself, they ached for a fight. Solitude had become as necessary in his life as his bed and his bread; and except when storms raged and the thermometer stood too far below zero, he left the house the moment his studies with his tutor were over, and took his reading into the woods or his canoe. On Saturdays and Sundays he was not permitted to open a book, and during the short summer there were no mental tasks. He spent these holidays in the woods or on the water, only returning to the house for his evening meal and his hard bed. Occasionally Morris accompanied him, and taught him much of practical forestry; but although the man and the boy were good friends, each preferred his solitudes--his long silences.