VEN one who admits that there are sermons in stones might find it hard to believe that there are romances in empty tin cans

After he had washed the dishes and scoured the iron spider in the beach sand, Baxter Stickney sat beside our camp fire and held that tin can in both his hands, his elbows on his knees. As he smoked he rolled the can slowly, his eyes constantly fixed on it as though it were affording him much material for meditation. He had picked the can up from the clutter left by a camping party. It was plainly a relic of summer voyaging, for the fall rains had rusted it. After fifteen minutes of silence between us I ventured upon Mr. Stickney's well-known taciturnity sufficiently to ask what the can had contained. He read aloud, stumbling over the words, his grizzled head near the

blaze:

"Cham-pig-nons one choix, Sevres près Paris! Guinea language for toadstools," he explained with the tone of a man who does not believe in that sort of food.

"I guided the party," he stated, after another five minutes of thoughtful inspec

tion of the can.

"It was the Candage party," he volunteered, after puffing at his pipe for five minutes more. "That in that can was a sample of what he eat."

He smoked reflectively for some moments, plainly struggling between caution and a desire to tell the story.

"Every time I see one of these cans I run the thing over again in my mind and wonder whether I did right. It has been gossiped up and down this river that I stuck my nose into business that didn't belong to me. When a man is fifty-six

and has guided ever since he was fourteer, he doesn't relish hav ng stories like that going round."

He gazed at me wistfully and I knew for what he was probing.

"I don't know what the stories are, Baxter," I hastened to say. "I believe that one of those new guides down at the foot of the lake tried to tell me something but I wouldn't listen to anything against a man that has guided me for ten years. If they are trying to get business by lying about you, let them lie; they can't disturb your old friends."

His eyes softened and a flush crept upon his brown cheeks above his beard.

"It's my old friends that I want to have understand just how I happened to be guiding in a place where I haven't any license to guide." He replied to the query

of my gaze, smiling. "I don't mean woods and inland waters! I mean that an old bach like me ought to have known better than to take the little bow-and-arrow fellow's job away from him. That's how I happened to get into trouble-but after I was in it I was glad to be there, and I want you to know why I was glad.

"If you only knew H. Soper Candage to start with, you'd understand the thing better. You don't know him, hey? He's from New York. When he came down to the float where I was patching my canoethat day he hired me he and New York and Edam cheeses all sort of run together in my mind. I saw some of those round, red, varnished cheeses when I was up tending out on the sportsmen's show. You could pile up Edam cheeses and make something that looked like Mr. Candage at a distance. Round, red face, red sweater, knee breeches, red stockings-all so that he wouldn't be shot for a deer, and he was fat and in bunches-and he stood against a

red sunset while he was talking with me, and I never noticed the sunset.

"Furthermore, when there's a new moon with a red sunset you're pretty apt to look hardest at the new moon. There was something better than a new moon with Mr. Candage. It was a girl, one of the kind that make you catch your breath when you get sudden sight of 'em, as I did, looking up from my canoe.

"Said he, 'Baxter Stickney?' "Said I, 'Yes, sir.'

"Want a six weeks' job?'

"I did, and I said so.

"There are four in my party, my daughter, a gentleman besides myself, and my cook. I have brought my own cook. There will be considerable baggage. I am hiring you to make all arrangements, hire other men and attend to all details. I have done all my own outfitting so far as food goes. I have my own tents and fittings. Get canoes and men, and don't bother me about details.'

"Where are you going?' says I.

"The girl wasn't looking very sociable nor very cheerful. She didn't seem to be taking special interest in things. But she pricked up her ears when I asked that question. He gave her a look out of the corners of his eyes. I've got eyesight for weather signs and wood trails-and for some other things. Just what was on in the Candage family it wasn't my business to guess at. But having eyesight I couldn't help seeing what I saw.

"I am going to rough it,' he said. 'Vigorous exercise in the open. My physician has sent me into the woods. Plain living, even some hardship if necessary, Stickney.'

"If you re going to put in six weeks, I suppose it will, be the Allagash trip,' said I.

"I'll do all the supposing for this party,' he fired back. I couldn't see anything for him to get mad about. A guide is supposed to know where he's going. 'You get your men and canoes together ready to start to-morrow morning.'

"So I went and looked over the stuff that had been unloaded from the steamboat at the carry wharf. Then I hunted him up and as politely and humbly as I could I suggested that for a six weeks' trip

had outfitted four times too much.

'Why, for just the duffle alone it will take six tote canoes and

"Look here, my man,' said he, ready mad again, I don't care how many canoes it takes. Those comforts for my daughter must go. There's only one job for your thick head to busy itself about; get that stuff across the carry and have canoes and men ready to start down—no, may be up river.' He gave the girl another sharp look. 'I'll tell you which way to go!'

"I gave her a look, too. There she stood, straight as a young birch, not an ounce nor a flounce on her that didn't belong there and he talking of six canoe loads of comforts for her! It was pretty hard work not to grin, but the expression on her face didn't invite any humor.

"I went back to sorting the stuff over and getting it ready for the wagons. I noticed her strolling down toward me, careless-like, after a time.

"Isn't it your business as chief guide to know where you are starting for?' she asked me.

"I had always supposed so-up to-day,

miss.'

"Why don't you find out, then?'

"I reckon that you can tell me, Miss Candage,' I said. 'Your father seems to be pretty short with me. But it isn't likely that he's taking you into the woods without telling you where he's going.'

"She snapped her eyes at me and I could see that the answer didn't suit very well.

"He never was in the woods before— how does he know where he is going? He should not be allowed to start off in any such fashion. You should tell him what trips there are to make from this point and make him select one of them.'

"I took off my hat so as to be as respectful as I could.

"Miss Candage,' I said, 'I've got slim relish for starting off as I'm starting-that I admit. But the relish I've got for giving off any ultimatums to your father, in the state of mind he seems to be in, is a good deal slimmer. You'll have to excuse me!'

"She threw up her head and spread her nostrils. I guess she was ready to say something pretty tart to me, but some one came out of the main camp and called to her.

"Oh, Lana! I say, Lana! Your papa wants you,' he said. It was the friend that

Mr. Candage had along. I just took a glance at him-Mr. Totten, H. Soper had called him. Not meaning any particular disrespect to Mr. Totten it occurred to me that if he'd had a lady's maid chasing behind him to hand over his scissors and thimble when he called on, it wouldn't have surprised me much—not after I'd seen him and heard his voice. Embroidery silk and shadder work went with him, nicely. The girl threw her head up and stamped her foot like a deer in the edge of the woods. Then she went along.

"And I kept on patching the canoe and wondering if I wasn't seeing into the state of things a little ways.

"I got a few fleeting glimpses of my party between that and bedtime whilst I was running my legs off getting ready to start the parade in the morning. The girl seemed to be bound to stick in the corner near the post office in the hotel. She kept looking at that slit where you drop in letters, like the hole had a fascination for her. Or perhaps she was only sitting there in the busiest corner so that Mr. Totten couldn't get a chance to buzz in her ear. I suspected that much. H. Soper had got on a pair of hunting shoes that weighed sartin ten pounds apiece, and was clumping up and down the length of the room, enjoying the noise he made, like the usual tenderfoot. I caught him grinning every time the girl gave a wishful look at the letterbox slit-and I wondered! I didn't have any business wondering about anything except how I was to get all that duffle across the carry to the West Branch next morning and scare up enough guides for the trip. And right under my feet most of the time was a little squirrel of a man with pointed-out moustache and a goatee like a chipmunk's tail, talking mostly with his hands and trying to tell me how he wanted them Dago vittles toted.

"That was Mr. Candage's cook. "Well, I got the outfit across and the canoes loaded by eight next morning," sighed Stickney with Homeric laconism. "It was tophet to do it, but I done it. Not a yip from H. Soper C. as to whether we was going up or going down. I wasn't asking him, not after he'd batted me that once with a remark about 'tending to my own business. There was six tote canoes, a man to each, with only tents, kits and

duffle and Dago vittles. I put the Dago cook and the tinware in with old Buel Bragg that I'd hired to wrassle grub for the guides. I thought they could entertain each other by swapping receipts.

"You'll ride with Mortimer,' says Edam to the girl.

"And there was Mr. Totten in the bow of the canoe he pointed at, and Mr. Totten's trunk in the middle. Yes, sir, that's what he had a trunk' I'd wasted half an hour that morning trying to amputate him from that trunk, but I wasn't enough of a surgeon. No duffle bags for him. It was trunk and Totten.

"Now from the time the girl hove in sight that morning even Romeo Dustin with his one eye could see that she wasn't in a picnic frame of mind.

"I am going with Stickney,' she said, and you know there's a way a woman says a thing sometimes-one certain way that makes it count. H. Soper looked at her, and then he leaned back in his hammock chair that he had had rigged up for him 'midships in his canoe, so as to be able to rough it, right up to the handle. He didn't say anything, which was probably good judgment. She jumped into my canoe light as a feather, rolled up her sleeves and took the bow paddle.

"Ordinarily, I don't like to have the sport fussing with the bow paddle. But I didn't say anything to her. It didn't look safe to say anything. I just run my eye over the fleet and held onto the beach shingle with my paddle.

"Sir,' says I to Mr. Candage, 'what's orders?'

"There's plenty of country down that way, is there?' he says, pointing a fat finger.

"I allowed there was.

"Well, then, go that way.' And he lighted a cigar thick's a paddle handle and leaned back in his hammock chair and shut his eyes.

"Me and the girl kept pretty well ahead of the rest, for she paddled as though she was working off some kind of feeling that way.

About four miles down we met Dave Ballou poling up with the Suncook mail, and it being on a straight stretch of river he could see what was coming behind us. He held up and slicked the sweat out of his

too, that was sort of confidential. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes. 'T any rate it caught me! I drove the canoe to the bank and begun to pole.

"Mr. Candage was roughing it by snoring like one of those old-fashioned coffee grinders sounds. He would never have noticed us if it hadn't been for Mr. Totten, who had a sunshade up and was reading a book, and who put his fingers in to keep the place and hollered across to us: 'Oh, I say, Lana! What's up?' I couldn't help it-I began to take sides right then and there! It's human nature, you know! He was butting in. 'Where are you going?' asks H. Soper, opening one eye. If he had opened both and turned his head