"I shall be here waiting for you, and you will come. And we will go on together into the Hills of All Desire!"
She stopped, trembling against him. Jimmie chose not to answer or to make any comment on what she had said. From experience he knew that she probably would not remember just what she had been saying. He wanted to ignore it altogether. He preferred to believe that her nerves had merely become over taut from her excitement of the afternoon and that the sudden surprise of the beautiful little mountain-locked lake had played tricks upon them. He looked about for a diversion, and found one.
Not twenty yards from where they stood, in plain view, though flanked heavily with trees on both sides, and some little distance from the water, there was a small wooden house with an open door. And before the open door sat a man calmly whittling shavings for a fire. As Jimmie stared open-mouthed—he was almost ready to take oath that neither the house nor the man had been there before, that they had both been moved into place there by some stage trick while his back had been turned—the man leaned over from the low stump on which he sat and heaped the shavings into a neat pile. Then he looked up, and though he certainly saw Wardwell standing there holding Augusta he gave no sign whatever that he was aware of them.
Good manners, anyhow! Jimmie commented to himself.
Then he turned Augusta around to see what he saw, and said quietly:
"I'm awfully sorry, dear. But it seems that someone is here ahead of us."
Augusta looked and saw. But, to Wardwell's relief, she did not seem to be disturbed or deeply disappointed.
"Well, let's talk to him anyway. Maybe he doesn't belong here," she whispered. "Maybe he just happened to stop."
He led her back to where Donahue was patiently nibbling at some sweet maple shoots and wondering when this day was going to end, and taking Donahue by the bridle and Augusta by the arm Wardwell went forward by the track which he now saw led up to the open door and presented himself and his retinue to the leisurely gentleman who seemed to be in possession.
"We didn't mean to come breaking into your camp. Fact is," Jimmie explained, "we just followed our horse. And when we saw the lake we just wanted to stay."