Gordon nodded. "Certainly," he assented readily. Then with apparent irrelevance, he added, "How did you know where to find me? Ring up the office?"
Palmer stared at him sullenly. "I don't see what difference that makes," he said; "but if you want to know, your friend the Holton girl told me."
"Ah, yes," said Gordon, "that was it, of course. I might have thought. Stupid of me."
Slowly they walked along toward the house, until suddenly, near the little cluster of pines, Gordon stopped. "Look here, Palmer," he cried, "I don't want to ask favors of you when you're naturally impatient and worked up over this thing, but on the other hand, my conscience is clear, and half an hour more or less won't make any difference, anyway. The last two nights there's been a big flock of Canada geese trading by the point here, and I'm keen to get a crack at them. In fact, that was what I came over for to-night. If it isn't too trivial at such a time, do you mind letting me try them?"
Palmer hesitated, and Gordon hastened to add, "Unless, of course, you're anxious to get to the station earlier for any other reason. I suppose, though, you left word at your office or your home where you'd gone, so that you don't really care particularly when you do get back."
Palmer shook his head. "No, I didn't," he answered. "This thing broke me all up, Gordon, and I posted right out here to see you. If you really want to try the geese, go ahead. I suppose it won't make any difference as to the train, anyway."
"No," Gordon assented; "that's true. There's no train we can get for two hours yet. A worse little branch road, I suppose, was never run anywhere. That station agent's going to get fired one of these fine days. He's never at the station when I come out."
"He wasn't there to-day," growled Palmer. "You've got the damnedest, out-of-the-way place to get to I ever saw. Your ducks aren't worth your trouble."
They had reached the edge of the little grove as Palmer finished speaking. Gordon's whole bearing seemed to have changed entirely. His eye was watchful, his step alert, as he snapped the sixteen-gage open and quietly slipped in a couple of shells. "We'll only wait a few minutes," he said. "Sometimes they come straight from the north. Would you mind looking out that way?"
Palmer obeyed, staring moodily out across the placid surface of the water. The sun had set, and in the faint, gathering dusk the brooding silence of the lake had about it something sinister, unearthly, threatening. Man, and his petty passions, his childish hopes and fears, seemed somehow strangely dwarfed into utter insignificance in the midst of nature's impassive, inscrutable calm. Involuntarily Palmer shivered.