Readily complying, Claud carefully rowed round the point and entered the dark and deep indenture constituting the cove, whose few acres of surface were thrown almost wholly into the shade, even at sunny noonday, by the thickly-clustered groups of tall, princely pines, which, like giant warriors in council, stood nodding their green plumes around the closely-encircling shores. Closely hugging the banks, now stopping behind some projecting clump of bushes, now in some rock-formed nook, and now in the covert of some low-bending treetop, to give the keen-eyed hunter a chance to peer round or through these screening objects into the open spaces along the shore beyond, he slowly pushed along the canoe till the whole line of the cove was explored, and they reached the point corresponding to the one at which they commenced their look-out for game, and all without seeing a living creature.
"Pshaw! this is dull business," exclaimed Claud, as they came out into the open lake, where he was left free to speak aloud. "This was so fine a looking place for game that I felt sure we should see something worth taking; and I am quite disappointed in the result."
"So that, then, is the best fruit you can show of my first lesson in hunting, is it, young man?" responded the hunter, with a significant smile.
Claud felt the implied rebuke, and promised better behavior for the future; when both seated themselves at the oars, and, as men naturally do, after an interval of suppressed action, plied themselves with a vigor that sent their craft swiftly surging over the waters in the line of their original destination.
They now soon reached, and shot along the shore of, a beautifully-wooded island, nearly a half-mile in extent, about midway of which the hunter-rested on his oars, and, after Claud, on his motion, had done the same, observed, pointing through a partial opening among the trees, along a visible path that led up a gentle slope into the interior of the island:
"There! do you catch a glimpse of a house-like looking structure, in an open and light spot in the woods, a little beyond where you cease to trace the path?"
"Yes, quite distinctly. What is it?"
"That belongs to the chief, and might properly enough be called his summer-house, as he generally comes here with his family to spend the hot months. He raises fine crops of corn in his clearing on there beyond the house, and saves it all, because the bears, coons, and squirrels, that trouble him else-where, are so completely fenced out by the surrounding water."
"Are the family there, now?"
"No; they have moved back to his principal residence, a mile or two distant, on a point of land over against the opposite side of this island, and not far out of our course."