I nodded without speaking. It seemed unfitting to break by words the ghostlike silence that brooded over this water so far from the life and ways of men. A moment later the guide joined us and brought us down from this high plane by his unconcerned talk. “Yes,” he said, “this lake’s just on the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. We came through ten miles of Virginia swamp this morning to get to it, and we’d have to pole through ten miles of North Carolina swamp if we tried to get out through the other side across the lake there.” “What sources feed Lake Drummond?” asked the Spinster, shaking herself free from the abstraction that had preceded Alphonso’s entrance upon the scene. “Nobody knows,” returned the guide, shaking his head. “Nobody knows where it comes from nor where it goes. The black folks around here say that the lake belongs to the devil and the scientific people say it’s of volcanic origin. Perhaps that amounts to the same thing.” Then he changed the subject by briskly demanding if we were ready for lunch. We ate our luncheon in the rough wooden house, which, with its shake-down beds and pine board tables, served as quarters for the hunters and scientists, sometimes for weeks at a time. Perhaps its limited accommodations satisfied them. We should not have been contented. We were not sorry to find ourselves once more in our comfortable boat and started on our homeward journey. “I reckon we don’t get any bears this trip,” remarked Alphonso, after we had progressed a considerable distance. “Do you often get them?” asked the Spinster. “Sure, though it’s kind o’ between seasons for them now. They ain’t out lookin’ after berries or honey. I might say that I bag ’em mighty frequent,” he continued. “That is, when I’m hunting by myself. When I’m guidin’ other folks they do more missin’ than hittin’, I’m bound to say,” he added with a laugh. We had heard the evening before that Alphonso was considered the best shot in Nansemond County, so that we did not doubt his personal prowess, but the humorous twinkle in his eye encouraged us to ask for stories of the misadventures of other people, and we heard various seriocomic tales of grave professors who could draw a trigger and yet miss a bear within six feet of them, or let a bear-cub crawl away unhurt, not from a sense of pity, but from absent-mindedness. “But I don’t mind so much their missin’ of the game,” said Alphonso, “as I do their wanderin’ off by themselves an’ gettin’ lost in this ’ere swamp. It takes me such a pile o’ walkin’ before I can round ’em up again. I remember once I was fool enough to let a party of three go off huntin’ by themselves. It took me two days before I found ’em again, an’ I can tell you I was gettin’ mighty anxious. My! didn’t they enjoy the wild-cow beefsteak I cooked for ’em that night!”