"Who's McQuade?" Jimmie inquired with a show of interest. He was nervous. He did not like the position at all. He was, in fact, out of his element. He was a man of city streets, where certain people are paid to take care of every sort of situation. Here he would not know what to do. This man was, beyond doubt, a criminal at large. It was entirely possible that a posse was even at this moment searching the vicinity for him. He would certainly have fire arms about. Wardwell shuddered as he thought of Augusta being senselessly exposed in a desperate affair of this kind. But, since Augusta had set the tone for the party, there was nothing for him to do but to follow her lead as best he could. "McQuade's a nut," said the big man, placing the table judiciously under a tree to windward of the fire. "He owns this place. He has a fine farm fifty miles down the Parishville road. He has plenty to do, and everything to do it with. And he has a grand energetic Yankee wife to see that he does it. But, an' there's the thrapin' contrary Irish of him, he'd far rather come up here an' sit on the step o' the door an' look out at the lake than to put in the finest harvest that ever was." "I think he's just right," Augusta argued, glad that a neutral subject had been introduced. For even she, in the heating test of holding the baking fish to the fire and watching the boiling potatoes, was not sure how long their thoughts and conversation could be kept away from forbidden ground. There were so many things which it would be unfortunate to mention to a strayed criminal. "'John McQuade o' the sunny shade an' the woodbine cottage' he calls himself, and he thinks, because he'd a long sight rather loaf and fish than work his honest farm, that he must surely be some sort of a character. I'm not sure but he half thinks he's a poet, or at the very least a philosopher. In five minutes he can give you more good reasons for vagabondin' than you could argue down in a long day's talk." "This must be a man worth knowing," said Jimmie. "He's jealous right away!" Augusta laughed. "He's afraid that somebody's been discovered who can talk more nonsense than he can." "Nonsense," said the big man sententiously as he picked the potato pot off the fire and turned to drain off the water, "nonsense is the salt o' creation. The maxims of the unwise," he pronounced, hanging the pot back over the fire again, to dry for a moment, "are the gatherings of fools' experience. But, ye'll mind, the fools get far more experience than the wise folk. So, there you are." He brought the potatoes from the fire and deftly turned them into the dish that Augusta had waiting. Augusta brought the baked fish, and he showed her how to slip it from the toaster, without disturbing the bacon which was cooked right into the fish.