human
Oh! how much more comfortable you must be. How did you get lost? Is your home far from here?
gpt
A long, long way;
human
What a pity! It will be so much harder to get word to your people. Maybe Pierre can carry a message, or show you the road, once you are strong enough again.
gpt
Who's Pierre?
human
Mother Ricord's son. He's a woodlander and wiser even than she is. He's really more French than Indian, but uncle says the latter race is strongest in him. It often is in his type.
gpt
A-ah, indeed! So you study types up here, do you?
human
Yes. Uncle makes it so interesting. You see, he got used to teaching stupid people when he was a professor in his college. I'm dreadfully stupid about books, though I do my best. But I love living things; and the books about animals, and races, are charming. When they're true, that is. Often they're not. There's one book on squirrels uncle keeps as a curiosity, to show how little the writer knew about them. And the pictures are no more like squirrels than--than they are like me.
gpt
A-ah, said the listener, again.
human
That explains.
gpt
I don't know what you mean. No matter. It's the old stupidity, I suppose. How did you get lost?
human
The same prevailing stupidity, he laughed.
gpt
Though I didn't realize it for that quality. Just thought I was smart, you know--conceit. I--I--well, I didn't get on so very well at the lumber camp I'd joined. I wasn't used to work of that sort and there didn't seem to be room, even in the woods, for a greenhorn. I thought it was easy enough. I could find my way anywhere, in any wilderness, with my outfit. I'd brought that along, or bought it after I left civilization; so one night I left, set out to paddle my own canoe. I paddled it into the rapids, what those fellows called rips, and they ripped me to ruin. Upset, lost all my kit, tried to find my way back, wandered and walked forever and ever, it seemed to me, and--you know the rest.
human
But I do not. Did you keep hallooing all that long time? or how did it happen we heard you?
gpt
I was in a rocky place when that tornado came and it was near the water. I had just sense enough left to know they could protect me and crept under them. Oh! that was awful--awful!
human
It must have been, but I was so deep in our cave that I heard but little of it. Uncle and Angelique thought I was out in it and lost. They suffered about it, and uncle tried to make a fire and was sick. We had just got home when we heard you.
gpt
After the storm I crawled out and I saw you in the boat. You seemed to have come right out of the earth and I shouted, or tried to. I kept on shouting, even after you were out of sight and then I got discouraged and tried once more to find a road out.
human
I was singing so loud I suppose I didn't hear, at first. I'm so sorry. But it's all right now. You're safe, and some way will be found to get you to your home, or that lumber camp, if you'd rather.
gpt
Suppose I do not wish to go to either place? What then?
human
Not--wish--to go--to your own dear--home?
gpt
Maybe not. Especially as I don't know how I would be received there. What if I was foolish and didn't know when I was well off? What if I ran away, meaning to stay away forever?
human
Well, if it hadn't been for the rocks, and me, it would have been forever. But God made the rocks and gave them to you for a shelter; and He made me, and sent me out on the lake so you should see me and be found. If He wants you to go back to that home He'll find a way. Now, it's queer. Here we've been talking ever so long yet I don't know who you are. You know all of us: Uncle Hugh Dutton, Angelique Ricord, and me. I'm Margot Romeyn. What is your name?
gpt
Mine? Oh! I'm Adrian Wadislaw. A good-for-nought, some people say. Young Wadislaw, the sinner, son of old Wadislaw, the saint.