us a sort of exalted feeling as we ate our breakfast in 

 the rain and looked out through the dripping trees at 

 the pimpled waters of the lake. 



Rain or no rain we had to have a little look at it, 

 even though the rollers which heaved down the narrow 

 passage from the big lake warned us that the open 

 waters were not for us. We spotted a crooked topped 

 pine to identify our island for there were dozens of 

 others like it and paddled lazily through that maze of 

 channels. We stumbled onto a hunter's shack on an- 

 other island and investigated the interior. There was 

 no one there and the door was on the latch. Cooking 

 utensils, snow shoes, traps, hide frames, hunting knives 

 and a few supplies. Things of great value in that 

 country and the door was open to all. Into that same 

 country the city man hesitates to go unarmed for fear 

 he will be robbed. 



At first we had thought that those islands were all 

 uninhabited but it seemed that an inhospitable red 

 squirrel had homesteaded each one. We lolled up one 

 narrow passage and down another, and no sooner did 

 we leave the jurisdiction of one island than the home- 

 steader on the next one began to bark angrily. Every 

 now and then the trolling line jerked taut and a north- 

 ern Pike flopped into the canoe. The lake trout, so plen- 

 tiful in these waters in the spring and fall, had not be- 

 gun to bite. We tried for them in vain. All afternoon 

 we sat around the fire reading the remnant of a novel 

 we had found on an old camp ground. It was entitled, 

 4 'From Lumber Camps to College." It was the most 

 unique collection of extravagant language that we had 



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