"I'll never let her get me on her hook!" he cried inwardly--meanwhile the hook was in his gills!
After he had given the men their dinner he, too, went away from camp, bent upon his own devices. No one paid any attention to him.
A couple of hundred yards east of the shack a good-sized creek emptied into the lake. The stones of the shore offered a barrier to its path, over which it tumbled musically. Farther inland it pursued a slower, deeper course.
Ascending its bank, in about a quarter of a mile one found it issuing out of a lovely little meadow, through which it meandered crookedly, its course marked out by willow bushes.
The meadow was Sam's objective. He had often been there before. It was about a quarter of a mile long, and no more than a good stone's throw across from pines to pines. Though the level of the ground was several feet above the creek, the ground, like the creek bottoms generally, was spongy and damp, with dry islands here and there.
The grass was amazingly luxuriant. Drenched in the strong sunlight, and hemmed all around by the secretive pines, the place was the very picture of a cheerful retreat. Silent, strong-winged water-fowl frequented it, and more than once Sam had caught a glimpse of a noble figure of a moose stepping out from among the trees.
Sam, ever anxious to learn the lore of the country, was experimenting in trapping muskrats. Finding a couple of the little beasts snared and drowned at the doors of their own dwellings, he set to work to skin them. His inexperienced fingers made a mess of the job.
He was sitting thus occupied on the edge of a little cut-bank, with his feet hanging over. A clump of willows flanked him on either side. The clear waters of the brook eddied sluggishly a few inches under his feet.
In the middle of his bloody task, something caused him to look over his shoulder, and there, not twenty feet from him, peering through the willows, he saw Bela.
From a variety of causes, he blushed to the roots of his hair. For one thing, he was thinking bitterly of her at that very moment; for another, he saw, or imagined he saw, scorn in her eyes for his clumsy handiwork upon the muskrat.
He hastily tossed the little carcass into the water, and then regretted having done so.