“That’s very kind of you,” said Tom, glancing amusedly at his companion. Brent reclined in an ungainly posture of complacent ease with a: whimsically observant look on his face as if ready to be interested in anything and everything which did not require any physical exertion. It got on Tom’s nerves a little, but it amused him. They drove through the clean, pleasant city of Kingston and over the bridge across the Esopus Creek and along the fine, smooth highway which parallels the Ulster and Delaware Railroad. A ride of half an hour or so brought them in sight of the vast, artificial lake which furnishes water to the distant metropolis. “Pretty big drink of water, hey?” drawled Brent. “They say it’s forty miles around it,” said Tom. “The dam is way over at the other end.” They could not see the whole reservoir from the road, but they caught glimpses of it and could form an idea of its long, irregular extent. Soon they came to the removed and rebuilt village of West Hurley near the shore of the reservoir. Close by, under the water as Tom knew, were the bones of the old dead village, traces of streets, odds and ends of demolished masonry, submerged memorials of the settlement which had once been there. There was not much to the new village; it must have lost something in the process of removal and revival of the community life. Some of its simple buildings seemed comparatively new. The visitors looked in vain for any signs of actual reconstruction. “Do you know,” mused Brent in his slow, dry way, “I don’t know why a reconstructed village shouldn’t be just as good as a new one—same as an automobile or a typewriter. I’d kind of like to get a squint under the water though. What do you suppose we’d see?” “If we were here during a drought,” said Tom, “we’d see things on the sloping shore, that’s what Pop Dyker said.” “Old village sort of pokes its nose up, hey?” “Sort of like a ghost,” Tom said. “Comes up for air,” said Brent. “Well, let’s move along. I guess the new village won’t get its feet wet, it seems to be well back.” They drove along the road a little farther and up toward Woodstock, which is the habitat of a queer race of poets and artists, and so on in a northeasterly direction till they came to Saugerties and found themselves back on the road which borders the lordly Hudson. At Catskill they paused for an inspection of the _Goodfellow_, Brent showing his usual amiable and whimsically passive interest at the prospect of acquaintance with this beauteous damsel of poor Tom’s heart. Tom was disappointed to find that his friend, the caretaker, had gone away and was not expected to return till late in the autumn. No one seemed to have the boat in charge and Tom (lacking Hervey Willetts’ aggressive genius) was disinclined to venture upon that hallowed deck without permission. Nor was there a rowboat handy in which to circumnavigate the trim little cruiser and view it at close range.