knew the country immediately about here any better than you—that though you’d only been here a month or two you had been all over it, and that you knew the habits of the turkeys and quail, and the best fishing grounds, better than any one else in the country.”

I nodded in assent. Of course I knew these things: on a zoological excursion for the university they were simply my business. But as yet I couldn’t guess how this information was to be of use to Grover Nealman.

“Now this is what my uncle wants,” the girl went on. “He’s going to have a big shoot and fish for some of his man friends—they are coming down in about two weeks. They’ll want to fish in the Ochakee River and in the lagoon, and hunt quail and turkey, and my uncle wants to know if—if he can possibly—hire you as guide.”

[Pg 15]

[Pg 15]

I liked her for her hesitancy, the uncertainty with which she spoke. Her voice had nothing of that calm superiority that is so often heard in the offering of humble employment. She was plainly considering my dignity—as if anything this sweet-faced girl could say could possibly injure it!

“All he wanted of you was to stay at Kastle Krags during the hunting party, and be able to show the men where to hunt and fish. You won’t have to act as—as anybody’s valet—and he says he’ll pay you real guide’s wages, ten dollars a day.”

“When would he want me to begin?”

“Right away, if you could—to-morrow. The guests won’t be here for two weeks, but there are a lot of things to do first. You see, my uncle came here only a short time ago, and all the fishing-boats need overhauling, and everything put in ship-shape. Then he thought you’d want some extra time for looking around and locating the game and fish. The work would be for three weeks, in all.”

Three weeks! I did some fast figuring, and I found that twenty days, at ten dollars a day, meant two hundred dollars. Could I afford to refuse such an offer as this?

It is true that I had no particular love for [Pg 16]many of the city sportsmen that came to shoot turkey and to fish in the region of the Ochakee. The reason was simply that “sportsmen,” for them, was a misnomer: that they had no conception of sport from its beginnings to its end, and that they could only kill game like butchers. Then I didn’t know that I would care about being employed in such a 

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