veins of water and sunlight. Till long past midnight we paddled and watched and listened, whisperless. In vain. At last, as we rounded a point, the level gleam of our dying camp-fire athwart the water reminded us of passing hours and traveller duties, of rest to-night and toil to-morrow.
My companions, fearless as if there were no bears this side of Ursa Major, were bivouacked in one of the barns. There I entered skulkingly, as a gameless hunter may, and hid my untrophied head beneath a mound of ancient hay, not without the mustiness of its age.
No one clawed us, no one chawed us, that night. A Ripogenus chill awaked the whole party with early dawn. We sprang from our nests, shook the hay-seed out of our hair, and were full-dressed without more ceremony, ready for whatever grand sensation Nature might purvey for our æsthetic breakfast.
Nothing is ever as we expect. When we stepped into out-of-doors, looking for Ripogenus, a lake of Maine, we found not a single aquatic fact in the landscape. Ripogenus, a lake, had mizzled, (as the Americans say,) literally mizzled. Our simplified view comprised a grassy hill with barns, and a stern positive pyramid, surely Katahdin; aloft, beyond, above, below, thither, hither, and yon, Fog,— not fog, but FOG.
Ripogenus, the water-body, had had aspirations, and a boon of brief transfiguration into a cloud-body had been granted it by Nature, who grants
