“Max,” said Lumley to me that evening during an interval in our devotion to steaks and marrow-bones, “look around for a moment if you can tear your gross mind from the contemplation of food, and tell me what you see?”
He made a sweep with his arm to indicate the surrounding scenery, which was at the moment irradiated by the after-glow of the setting sun, as well as the brightening beams of the full moon.
“I see,” said I, looking up, “a lovely lake, dotted with islets of varied shape and size, with the pale moon reflected almost unbroken in its glassy waters.”
“What else do you see?” asked Lumley.
“I see around and beyond a prospect of boundless woodland, of plain, mound, hill, lake, and river, extending with a grand sweep that suggests ideas which can only be defined by the word Immensity. I see altogether a scene the like of which I never looked upon before—a scene of beauty, peacefulness, and grandeur which gladdens the eye to behold and fills the heart with gratitude to its Maker.”
“You say well, Max,” returned my friend, “and it seems to me that we may regard this Lake Wichikagan which we now look upon as our inheritance in the wilderness, and that the spot on which we now sit shall be, for some time at least, our future home.”