Now, as she walked homeward, she said to herself, “But who on earth was that Lady Macbeth Mr. Lyndsay talked about? It must be a book. I forgot to ask. Think I’d like to read it. I’ll ask Miss Anne. The way a woman p’ints a man is the thing. Guess I’ve always p’inted Hiram straight, thank the Lord! I wonder if he’s seen about mending that scythe?”
Meanwhile, by noon, came lazily back Polycarp and the canoe, without a bowman. Lyndsay was vexed. There had been no one at the clearings who could be had. Pierre, when he came in, must go down with the mail. Said Lyndsay:
“Go back at once. Stop at the Island Camp. There seems to be a lot of men about there. I saw four canoes on the shore. The lumbermen are driving on that reach. Some one said a photographer was camped there. He can’t want both of his men. Don’t ask the gentlemen for a man; I don’t know them. Now, mind what I say. Find somebody; I’ll pay him a dollar for his half-day, but don’t come back without a bowman.”
“It’s a great thing the way you p’int a man, papa,” said Rose. “Mrs. Maybrook has the trick of it.”
“He’ll find some one now. You had better fish the rock stretch, a mile above the Island Camp. The Indian knows, and no one has cast a fly there yet. Be careful not to get on Mr. Carington’s water. Watch Polycarp, or he’ll let you fish down to the bay. They are all born poachers, these fellows.”
Polycarp said “Yes,” and no more, and poled doggedly away up the river, not over well pleased. At the camp he beached his canoe. The photographer had gone. The lumbermen could none of them get leave; and the Indian, pleased at the prospect of a lazy half-day with his pipe, was on his way back to his canoe, when the tent-fly of the larger canvas home was parted, and he heard:
“Halloa! Want anything?”
“Want man for bow to pole down at Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay he goin’ a-fishin’, and my man sick—hurt leg. No much good.”
“Well, ask the lumbermen.”
“No make any use.” At this appeared a second man, also, like the first, in knickerbockers. He wore a glass on one eye, and looked Polycarp over curiously. Then he went back, and lay down with a novel and a pipe.