"Mrs. Batt?"
"Yes."
He said seriously:
"She'll make a horrid outcry when she asks for her knitting. What are you going to tell her?"
"I shall say that Indians ambuscaded us while she was asleep, and carried off all those things."
"You lie very nicely, don't you?" he remarked admiringly.
"In vitium ducit culpæ fuga," said I. "Besides, they don't really need those articles."
He laughed. He didn't seem to be very much afraid of Mrs. Batt.
It had grown deliciously dusky, and myriads of stars were coming out. Little by little the lake lost its shape in the darkness, until only an irregular, star-set area of quiet water indicated that there was any lake there at all.
I remember that Brown and I, reclining at the foot of the tree, were looking at the still and starry surface of the lake, over which numbers of bats were darting after insects; and I recollect that I was just about to speak, when, of a sudden, the silent and luminous surface of the water was shattered as with a subterranean explosion; a geyser of scintillating spray shot upward flashing, foaming, towering a hundred feet into the air. And through it I seemed to catch a glimpse of a vast, quivering, twisting mass of silver falling back with a crash into the lake, while the huge fountain rained spray on every side and the little lake rocked and heaved from shore to shore, sending great sheets of surf up over the rocks so high that the very tree-tops dripped.