“Well, don’t eat her up with your eyes!” exclaimed Moore, and I realized I had been staring. Also I was just about to tell him of seeing her before, but the chaffing tone he used somehow shut me up on the subject. So I only said, gaily: “Bowled over by the Lady of the Lake!” and laughed back at him. “That’s what she’s called up here,” he informed me. “She’s in her canoe so much and manages it so perfectly, she seems like a part of it. Of course, wherever she goes, she has to go in that or in some boat. Can’t get on and off an island in a motor car.” “Must be an awful nuisance.” “She doesn’t find it so. Says she likes it better than a motor. Look at her paddle. Isn’t she an expert?” “She sure is.” And I held my tongue tightly to refrain from saying that she seemed to me to have paddled even more beautifully the night before. But, I said to myself, that was doubtless the glamour loaned by the moonlight and the witchery of the night scene. Miss Remsen soon reached Pleasure Dome, and we could see her beach her canoe and follow her with our eyes for a few steps until she disappeared behind a clump of tall trees. We set to work then in good earnest and I saw in Keeley Moore for the time being an embodiment of perfect happiness. He loved to fish, even alone, but better still, he loved to fish with a congenial companion. And we were that. Though not friends of such very long standing, we were similar in our likes and dislikes as well as in our dispositions. We had an identical liking for silence at times, and as a rule we chose the same times. Often we would sit for half an hour in a sociable silence, and then break into the most animated conversation. This morning, after we had begun to fish, such a spell fell upon us. I was glad, for I wanted to think things out; to learn, if possible, why I was so interested, or why, indeed, I was interested at all, in Alma Remsen. Just because I saw her paddling over to her uncle’s house the night before and again this morning, was that enough to make me feel that I must keep still about the first excursion? And, if so, why? I didn’t even know yet what she looked like. So it couldn’t be that I had fallen for a pretty face—I didn’t even know whether she had one. I thought of asking Kee that, but decided not to. A strange, vague instinct held me back from mentioning Alma Remsen’s name. Suddenly he said, “Damn!” in a most explosive way, and not unnaturally I thought he had lost one of those biggest of all big fishes. But as he began pulling in his empty line and making other evident preparations for bringing our fishing party to an end, I mildly asked for light on the subject. “Got to go home,” he said, like a sulky child. “What for?” “See that red flag in the bungalow window? That means come home at once. Lora only uses it in cases of real importance, so we’ve got to go.” CHAPTER III THE TRAGEDY