" The old man's honest face
won the poor sister's confidence, as she took her seat beside him and
left her Stevy to the care of the minister and Coristine. With all their
might and main paddled the Captain and Ben. Joyfully, all the company
saw stretch after stretch of the lake behind them, until, at last, they
passed the fishermen and landed on the shore. The minister and the
lawyer laid their coats upon the boards of the log shelter, and placed
their burden upon them. "Let him sleep a bit," said Mr. Errol to the mad
woman; "let him sleep, and you help my friend to get a few flowers to
take home with him." So Coristine took his candle-box from the floor of
the punt, and, with his strange companion, gathered the skullcaps and
loose-strifes and sundews that grew by the shore. She knew the flowers
and where to find them, and filled the lawyer's improvised vasculum
almost to overflowing with many a new specimen. He only took them to
humour her, for what cared he for all the flowers that bloom when death,
and such a death, was but a few yards away.
Ben Toner brought the fishers back with two good strings of fish; but,
when they heard the story, they threw them into the lake.
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