I rowed along the shore, and was at the trysting place promptly. Fortunately I had a slight cold, and was thereby better enabled to resist some of the odors that I was likely to encounter during the day.
Sipes was dumfounded when I explained the object of the early visit.
“You cert’nly must be lookin’ fer trouble,” he declared; “if ye want to spend a day like that, why don’t ye go over an’ set quiet ’round ’is smokehouse, instid o’ bein’ bumped along on ’is honey cart all day?”
The air was still, and the low, gentle swells out on the water were opalescent in the early morning light. Sipes had just returned from a visit to his set-lines and gill-nets, over a mile away in the lake. He had started about two o’clock, and his boat on the beach contained the slimy merchandise which we were to convert into what Sipes called “cash-money” during the day.
We went down to the shore to inspect the catch. Numerous flopping tails and other unavailing protests against uncongenial environment were evident in the boat. There were fifteen or twenty Whitefish, about a dozen carp, several suckers, and a lot of good-sized perch, which had been found in the gill-nets. The set-lines had yielded two sturgeon, one weighing about thirty-five pounds and the other over fifty. These two finny victims dominated the boat.
“I swatted ’em when I took ’em in, but they seem to be gittin’ gay agin,” remarked Sipes, as he reached for an old axe handle lying near the bow. The struggling fish soon became quiet.
“There comes yer old college friend,” he said, as he glanced up the beach. The rheumatic horse was patiently pulling the odd vehicle along the shore, near the water line where the sand was firm, partially concealing the bent figure with the faded slouch hat on the seat behind him.
“I’d know that ol’ hat if I seen it at the South Pole,” said Sipes. “It turns up in front an’ flops down behind. It’s got some little holes in the top, through which some wind blows when ’e’s wearin’ it. He’s ’ad it ever since I come on the beach, an’ that wasn’t yisterd’y, neither, an’ they ain’t no other lid that ’ud look right on John, an’ they ain’t nobody else that ’ud wear it fer a minute. He needn’t never be ’fraid that anybody’s goin’ to swipe it, ’specially ’round ’ere.”