"Down't be axin' questions. Sivy-ears go peekin' an' peekin' an' they don't tell whatever they may see. For why should there be sivy-ears at all, if they towld what they do be seein'?"
MacLester was both irritated and amused; but he was getting too uneasy now to let the all-too-apparent humbuggery of his companion go unchallenged.
"Well, I'll say this much, Mr. Smith, that if you know where your instruments are, and can go there right off, I'll stand by my bargain to help you; but if you don't, you better say so. We're five miles from the lake now, if we're a foot."
"Yes, it's right ye air," was the still unsatisfactory answer. And though Dave replied more sharply than he had yet spoken, his companion each time responded in soft tones and mild language, but always evasively.
"Well! if you know where we are, tell me that!" spoke MacLester very firmly at last. "I'm going not a step further until I know what sort of a wild goose business you are taking me on!"
"Oh,–oh! Sorra day–sorra day!" The man sat himself down heavily upon a fallen tree over whose prostrate trunk he had just escaped falling. "Ye must do as ye will, but it's lost I fear I am."
"Lost?" echoed Dave loudly. "You don't mean that we've been jamming ahead in the dark, and all this distance, without knowing where we were going!"
"It was not far!" Mr. Smith moaned wearily. "Oh! it is tired am I!"
"Well! I'll be cow-kicked!"
And possibly David MacLester may be excused for using so impolite an expression when his situation is considered. Here he was miles from Opal Lake–miles from camp, and lost in the woods in the dead of night with a strange man who might be either a dangerous crook or a harmless lunatic–circumstances pointed toward both.