"No!" exclaimed Clyde. "It does not tranquillize me a bit. Nothing could tranquillize me at a moment like this. Margery, I want you to know that I love you. I did not intend to tell you so soon, but what you have said makes it necessary. I have loved you ever since I met you at Peter Sadler's, and, no matter what you say about it, I shall love you to the end of my life."
"Even if I should send you away with one of the others?"
"It doesn't matter. Right or wrong, I'd do it."
Margery gave him a glance from which it would have been impossible to eliminate all signs of admiration. "And if I were to arrange it otherwise," she said, "would you undertake to keep the others away?"
There was no answer to this question, but in a minute afterwards Clyde exclaimed: "Do you think any one would dare to come near you if they saw you now?"
"Hardly," said Margery, raising her head from his shoulder and looking up into his sparkling eyes. "Really, Harrison, you ought not to speak in such a loud voice. If Aunt Harriet were to hear you she might dare to come."
Margery was late to dinner, although the horn was blown three times.
Much to the surprise of his wife, Mr. Archibald returned to camp about an hour before dinner.
"How is this?" she exclaimed. "Wasn't the fishing good?"
"I have had a disagreeable experience," he said, "and I will tell you about it. I was fishing in a little cove some distance down the lake and having good sport, when I heard a thumping, and looking around I saw Raybold in a boat rowing towards me. I suppose he thought he was rowing, but he was really floating with the current; but as he neared me he suddenly pulled his boat towards me with such recklessness that I was afraid he would run into me. I considered his rowing into the cove to be a piece of bad manners, for of course it would spoil my fishing, but I had no idea he actually intended to lay alongside of me. This he did, however, and so awkwardly that his boat struck mine with such force that it half tipped it over. Then he lay hold of my gunwale, and said he had something to say to me.
"I was as angry as if a man in the street had knocked my hat down over my eyes and said that he did so in order to call my attention to a subscription paper. But this indignation was nothing to what I felt when the fellow began to speak. I cannot repeat his words, but he stated his object at once, and said that as this was a good opportunity to speak to me alone, he wished to ask me to remove what he called the utterly useless embargo which I had placed upon him in regard to Margery. He said it was useless because he could not be expected to give up his hopes and his plans simply because I objected to them; and he went on to say that if I understood him fully, and if Margery understood him, he did not believe that either of us would object. And then he actually asked me to use my influence with her to make her listen to him. From what he said, I am sure he has been speaking to her. I did not let him finish, but turned and blazed at him in words as strong as would come to me. I ordered him never to speak to me again or show himself in my camp, and told him that if he did either of these things he would do them at his peril; and then, for fear he might say something which would make me lose control of myself, I jerked up my anchor and rowed away from him. I didn't feel like fishing any more, and so I came back."