Dave was permitted to make comments, but to take no more active part in the proceedings. As he was a man of deeds and dreams rather than of speech, this was not the rôle he coveted, and he held his tongue; while Miranda, deftly paying out the line with one hand, with the other cleverly wielded the paddle so that the canoe slipped toward shore. She was too much absorbed in the operation to vouchsafe any explanation to Dave, but he saw that she intended making fast the other end of the line to a stake which jutted up close to the water’s edge.
Miranda now slipped the line under her foot to hold it, and, taking both hands to her paddle, was about to make a landing, when suddenly there was a violent tug at one of the hooks. The line was torn from under her light foot, and at once dragged overboard. Dave saw what had happened; but he was wise enough not to say, even by look or tone, “I told you so!” Instead, he turned and pointed to the float, which was now acting very erratically, darting from side to side, and at times plunging quite under water. The glassy mirror of the lake was shattered to bits.
“You’ve got him a’ready, Mirandy,” he cried in triumph; and his palpable elation quite covered Miranda’s chagrin. Two or three strong strokes of her paddle brought the canoe back to the float, and Dave had his reward.
“Catch hold of the float, Dave,” she commanded, “and pull him aboard, while I hold the canoe.”
With a great splashing and turmoil he hauled up a large togue, of twelve pounds or thereabouts, and landed it flopping in the bottom of the dugout. A stroke in the back of the neck from Miranda’s knife, sharp but humane, put a term to its struggles.
While Dave gazed admiringly at the glittering spoil, Miranda began untying the line from the float.
“What air ye doin’ now, Mirandy?” he inquired, as she proceeded to strip the bait from the remaining hooks, and throw the pieces overboard.
“We won’t want any more togue for a week,” she explained. “This is such a fine, big one.” And she headed the canoe for the landing-place, under the shadow of the point.
Chapter XV
A Venison Steak
Throughout the succeeding winter Dave managed to visit the clearing two or three times in the course of each month, but he could not see that he made any progress in Miranda’s favour. As at first, she was sometimes friendly, sometimes caustically indifferent. Only once did he perceive in her the smallest hint of gratification at his coming. That was the time when he came on his snow-shoes through the forest by moonlight, the snow giving a diffused glimmer that showed him the trail even through the densest thickets. Arriving in the morning, he surprised her at the door of the cow stable, where she had been foddering the cattle. Her face flushed at the sight of him; and a look came into her wide, dark eyes which even his modesty could not quite misunderstand. But his delight quickly crumbled: Miranda was loftily indifferent to him during all that visit, so much so that after he had gone Kirstie reproached her with incivility.