“Then go on.”
I was out of patience with Bates, with the pathless woodland, and, I must confess, with the spirit of John Marshall Glenarm, my grandfather.
We came out presently upon a gravelly beach, and Bates stamped suddenly on planking.
“This is the Glenarm dock, sir; and that’s the boat-house.”
He waved his lantern toward a low structure that rose dark beside us. As we stood silent, peering out into the starlight, I heard distinctly the dip of a paddle and the soft gliding motion of a canoe.
“It’s a boat, sir,” whispered Bates, hiding the lantern under his coat.
I brushed past him and crept to the end of the dock. The paddle dipped on silently and evenly in the still water, but the sound grew fainter. A canoe is the most graceful, the most sensitive, the most inexplicable contrivance of man. With its paddle you may dip up stars along quiet shores or steal into the very harbor of dreams. I knew that furtive splash instantly, and knew that a trained hand wielded the paddle. My boyhood summers in the Maine woods were not, I frequently find, wholly wasted.
The owner of the canoe had evidently stolen close to the Glenarm dock, and had made off when alarmed by the noise of our approach through the wood.
“Have you a boat here?”
“The boat-house is locked and I haven’t the key with me, sir,” he replied without excitement.