That first afternoon he and she went for a long walk where the twisting red-brown trail wound half aimlessly through the still forest; and she lectured him with a sternness that he found delicious, upon his lack of appreciation for the vistas, nooks and leafy sanctums she pointed out. Before supper she made him take her out on the lake, in one of the long, slender guide-boats, whose over-lapping oar handles he found so hard to manage. In midstream she bade him stop rowing, and pointed to the west. Against a green-gold background of sky, long crimson cloud-streamers flickered. “It looks as if the wind were on fire,” she breathed in ecstasy. And he, after a perfunctory glance and a word of acquiescence, bent again to his oars. The lake was dotted with boats of the “sunset fleet.” The occupants of a dark blue St. Lawrence skiff hailed them. Caleb, in obedience to Desirée’s gesture rowed closer. The oarsman of the other boat proved to be Jack Hawarden who was returning with his mother from a climb of the Crags. “Isn’t this sunset well worth traveling all the way from Granite to see?” called Jack. “It _is_ kind of pretty,” assented Caleb. “‘Pretty!’” repeated Mrs. Hawarden in gentle scorn. “What a word for such a scene! It brings out all that is highest and most beautiful in one!” she went on soulfully. “I wish, instead of rowing back to the Antlers to supper, I might drift on here forever.” “You’d be li’ble to get rather hungry after a few hours of it, I guess,” volunteered Caleb, feeling he was somehow beyond his depth. “Hungry!” shuddered Mrs. Hawarden, loath to come down to earth. “I should be feasting on the sunset. What more could anyone want?” “Well, ma’am,” suggested Conover, dubiously, “if you leave it to me, I’d rather just now have a tripe sandwich.” “Come, Jack,” said Mrs. Hawarden coldly. “I think we’ll go in.” “Oh, how _could_ you!” laughed Desirée, in mock despair, as Caleb and she followed. “Why, her very _boat_ radiates disgust. She’ll never forgive you for spoiling her rhapsody. A tripe sandwich! How _could_--?” “It was the first thing that came into my head,” he excused. “An’ this mountain air’s put an edge on my ap’tite that I could shave with. A tripe sandwich would taste good. I’m sorry if I--” “If it had been anything less hideously plebeian!” she insisted. “Even roast shoulder of tripe would have sounded better. Oh, tripe doesn’t have shoulders, though, does it?” “It may, for all I know,” he returned. “But, say, Dey, have I made you mort’fied? Honest, I didn’t mean to.” “I _ought_ to scold you,” she answered. “But, for letting me see that look on poor Mrs. Hawarden’s face, I forgive you everything.” Jack Hawarden, entering Conover’s tent a half hour later, found the Fighter struggling into a dinner jacket.