"Let's land there," Madeline exclaimed suddenly. "It looks like a jolly
place."
She pointed toward a stretch of beach caught between the arms of trees
that came to the very water's edge, and enshrined in a great wild
grape-vine that had climbed from branch to branch until it made a
tangled canopy.
Dick turned sharply inward and ran their prow into the twittering sand.
"Thou speakest and it is thy servant's place to obey," he said.
"How does it feel to keep slaves? I've often wondered," Ellery said as
he jumped ashore and Dick began tossing him rugs and cushions.
"Very comfy, thank you, and not at all un-Christian," she answered
saucily. "Dick, don't throw the supper basket, under penalty of
liquidating the sandwiches. I think there's a freezer of ice-cream under
the deck, if you'll pull it out. Now, are you ready for me?"
She stepped lightly forward under Dick's guidance, took Ellery's
outstretched hands and sprang to the shore, where a kind of throne was
built for her against a prostrate log,--all this help not because it was
necessary, but as the appropriate pomp of royalty.
"I suspect," said Dick, looking about him with great satisfaction, "that
this was a favorite picnic place for Gitche Manito and Hiawatha, in the
morning of days."
"That shows how nature can forget," Madeline retorted. "Surely you know
the real story, Dick."
"I don't," said Ellery. "Tell it to me."
She snuggled comfortably down into her rugs.
"In early days, which is the western equivalent for 'once upon a time,'
a furious storm raged down the lake and tore the water into long
ribbons of purple and green. A beautiful girl stood, perhaps on this
very spot, with a savage who had rescued her from a sinking canoe and
brought her here, dripping but safe. Over there on the mainland her
father came running out of the woods in an agony of fear. He saw her
here, saw her signals, but the shriek of the storm and the roar of the
waters drowned out the words that she frantically screamed toward him.
He saw her point to the Indian, who was always feared, always counted
treacherous, and his dread of the hurricane changed to terror of the
savage. He raised his rifle and the girl's deliverer dropped dead at her
feet."
"Then fifty years went by, and this became a bower for the eating of
sandwiches," added Dick.
Norris was lying on his back and staring through the tangle of grape and
maple leaves at the flecks of blue beyond.
"That's a noble story," he said. "I didn't suppose this new land had any
legends. It all gives me the impression of being just old enough to be
big."
"Isn't that the conceit of the Anglo-Saxon? He calls this a new land
because he's lived here only about a half-century. Things did happen
before you were born, my dear boy," said Dick.