was to meet a friend of mine in Boston, and we were to motor together through New England. At the last moment I had a telegram from this friend changing the plan and asking me to meet him in Quebec. I arrived a day or so ahead of him, I suppose; at least, he wasn't at the hotel where he said he'd be." "Go on," she encouraged. "I had been there a day and a night, waiting, and, since I didn't know any one in Quebec, it was becoming rather tiresome. Last evening at dinner I happened to sit in with a big, two-fisted young fellow who confessed that he was in the same boat—waiting for somebody to turn up. After dinner we went out together and made a round of the movies, with three or four cafés sandwiched in between. I drank a little, just to be friendly with the chap, and the next thing I knew I was trying to go to sleep over one of the café tables. I seem to remember that my chance acquaintance got me up and [Pg 10] headed me for the hotel; but after that it's all a blank." [Pg 10] "Didn't you know any better than to drink with a total stranger?" the young woman asked crisply. "Apparently I didn't. But the three or four thimblefuls of cheap wine oughtn't to have knocked me out. It was awful stuff; worse than the vin ordinaire they feed you in the Paris wine-shops." "It seems rather suspicious, doesn't it?" she mused; "your sudden sleepiness? Are you—are you used to drinking?" "Tea," he laughed; "I'm a perfect inebriate with a teapot." "There must be an explanation of some sort," she insisted. Then: "Can you climb a tree?" He got up and dusted the sand from his clothes. "I haven't done it since I used to pick apples in my grandfather's orchard at Batavia, but I'll try," and he left her to go in search of a tree tall enough to serve for an outlook. The young woman had the two kitchen [Pg 11] utensils washed and sand-scoured by the time he came back. [Pg 11] "Well?" she inquired. "A wild and woolly wilderness," he reported; "just a trifle more of it than you can see from here. The lake is five or six miles wide and perhaps twice as long. There are low hills to the north
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