Slowly, missing no inch of the seine, he traveled the length of it, and as he traveled he marked every hole and weak spot by telling himself about it. Reaching the end, he stood nervously tapping a finger against his forehead. "My hands are more accustomed to pulling seines than mending them," he told the three. "Still, if we are to make the catch we can make, this seine must be mended. I will try to mend it."

"I worked on a net in Three Points!" Ramsay said eagerly. "I stayed for a while with Pierre LeDou, and because there was nothing else to kill time, I helped Madame LeDou knit a gill net! This cannot be too different!"

"You!" For a moment Ramsay thought Hans was going to kiss him. "So!

Everything works our way! Yaah? You fix the seine!" His face fell. "No.

We must have new twine. Now where will I get it?"

"I have some," Marta spoke up. "Good linen twine, easily a match for anything in this seine."

"And you would give it?" Pieter asked incredulously.

Marta shrugged. "You're going fishing, anyway, and I'm going with you.

Men always want all the fun."

The smile Hans turned on her was rare. "A good Dutch girl," he said.

"Thank you, Marta."

Pieter and Hans cut tripods--three poles strung together at the top to form a standard--and at necessary intervals raised the seine to them so that it was completely off the ground. Like a huge tennis net, broken only by the tripods, it stretched between the two trees. Ramsay stood beside it with a one and one-half inch meshboard--this mesh was three inches--and a ball of the fine linen twine which Marta had given him.

He worked as fast as he could, while at the same time he did not sacrifice efficiency. More than ever fishing seemed to be an art within itself, and if the seine were not perfectly made, then it was better left alone. A slipshod or hasty knot could cost them a hundred pounds of fish, or even the seine itself. As Ramsay went along, he judged for himself which parts needed repairing. Any mesh that seemed to be worn must be replaced; a whole school of fish might follow each other through a single hole.

For half an hour Hans stood watching him. Then, satisfied that Ramsay knew what he was about, he went off to cut new floats and place them on top of the seine. A dozen times he went down to study the bay, looking carefully and judging for himself the depth at which they would find the largest schools of whitefish. Coming back, he adjusted the stone sinkers accordingly.

Absorbed in his work, Ramsay gave no thought to the passage of time until Marta called him for supper. As soon as he had finished eating, he returned to the net. Darkness deepened and still he worked on.

"Ach!" Marta said. "You'll kill yourself working! Can you not come in now?"

"Just a little while. Bring me a lantern."

Ramsay heard Hans Van Doorst murmur, "A fisherman, that one," and a yellow lantern glowed behind him. It was nothing more than a tallow candle set in a glass case but, Ramsay thought, he really didn't need a stronger light. So sensitive had his fingers become to the feel of the net, and so expert was he in knitting new meshes, that, almost, he would have been able to do it with his eyes closed. He worked on while, held alternately by Hans and Pieter, the lantern moved with him. He forgot the ache in his fingers and the weariness in his body. He knew only that the sooner the net was in good working order, the sooner they could go fishing.

The pre-dawn birds were again singing when Ramsay finally bumped against something and, so absorbed had he been in his work, it took him a moment to realize that it was the other tree. He held the mesh board in fingers which, strangely and suddenly, seemed to lack all nerve or feeling. He blinked almost stupidly and stepped back.

When he spoke, his words sounded almost silly. "Well," he said, "there it is."

"There indeed it is!" Hans chuckled. "And there it will be until, as soon as possible, we get it into the water. Come now and sleep, for with the morning's sun I would have you go with me."

Ramsay stumbled to his bedroom, took his shoes off, and without removing any of his other clothing, fell across the bed. Instantly he was submerged in exhausted slumber from which he was awakened by a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Come now," a voice said.

Ramsay sat up with a start, to see Hans Van Doorst looking down at him.

Again with a guilty feeling, he knew that he had slept far beyond the time when any worker in this country should sleep. Hastily he sprang out of bed. "I'll be right with you!"

"Compose yourself," said Hans Van Doorst, who had awakened him. "There is no need for any mad rush. I thought you might wish to help me."

"Oh, sure!"

Ramsay grinned faintly when he discovered that, except for his shoes, he was fully dressed. He put his shoes on and tied them, went outside to wash at the wash stand, and came in to eat the breakfast Marta had ready. Scarcely noticing what he ate, he gulped it down.

"Easy," Marta cautioned. "The stomach complaint you will be giving yourself!"

"I must hurry! Hans is waiting for me!"

"With men it is always hurry, especially when they go to do what they wish to do anyway. Aah! Only a man would give up a good farm to go fishing!"

"Pieter has not given up his farm," Ramsay pointed out.

"He will," Marta prophesied. "He will, and he will go fishing with you and that crazy Hans."

"Oh, Marta, don't be so sad about things! It ..."

She was sunny again. "Go along now. Hans is waiting."

Hans had Black hitched to the cart and was waiting outside the door. His wings calmly folded, Captain Klaus sat on the back of the seat. Ramsay climbed up, and Hans slapped the reins over the horse's back. They started up the sand beach--there was a corduroy road but the sand was smoother--toward Three Points.

Ramsay grinned impishly as they drove through the town, because he felt the questioning glances of the towns people. Devil Chad controlled all this, and Devil Chad had made it very clear that Ramsay was not wanted in Three Points. Maybe Hans wasn't wanted either but, as Pierre LeDou had pointed out, the fishermen and farmers cared little what anyone else thought. Ramsay looked about, hoping to see Devil Chad, but he was nowhere in sight. A little disappointed, he relaxed beside Hans.

They drove through the village and up a rutted little road that wound among gloomy hemlocks. Ramsay saw a doe with a fawn at her side, staring at them. As they drew near the doe raised her white tail over her back and disappeared. Hans grinned at her.

"They shoot the mammas with the babies," he said, "just like they do the papas with the horns. There is no more right in that than there is in netting a spawning fish."

"You mean because the babies will die?"

"Yaah. Then, after there aren't any more deer, people just do not understand it. Some awful disease, they say, carried them off. They do not know that their own lack of sense carried them off. It is the same with fish. Those who seine in the spawning season kill maybe two hundred for every one they take. When there are not any more fish, they will invent a terrible disease that carried them off."

Ramsay felt a little alarm. "Do you think there won't be any more?"

"The whitefish," Hans pronounced, "cannot last in numbers such as you find them in now. That is because so many of them are being caught. For maybe ten thousand years they are filling the lake until now no fish is more numerous. Yaah, for many years they were a food staple of the Indians. I myself have seen Indians spearing them, or shooting them with bows and arrows. Tribes came from as far as the Mississippi River to fish here. But a net fisherman takes more in one season than a whole tribe of Indians used to, and often the fishermen cannot even take care of what they catch. I have seen whitefish, good eating whitefish, stacked like cordwood along the beach and left to rot there. I have seen them fed to pigs. The best fishing along Lake Erie is already gone, due to such excesses. That is why fishermen from Ohio come here."

"Will fishing end?" Ramsay inquired.

"That I do not think. Considering it from all angles. Now a fisherman will catch perhaps a thousand whitefish, and maybe a hundred sturgeon, for every trout. Why? Because the whitefish and sturgeon eat trout spawn is part of the reason. When the whitefish and sturgeon are gone, the trout will multiply until they are the big catch. If the trout are taken or die out, there will be something else. No. There will always be fishing here, but it will be better when men learn to fish wisely and not to take anything in the spawning season."

"When is that?" Ramsay inquired.

"Whitefish and trout both spawn in the fall, from the fifteenth of October until the fifteenth of December. The sturgeon, I think they are a river fish and that they go up the rivers to spawn. If ever the rivers are closed, there will be many fewer sturgeon."

The gloomy little road swerved back toward the lake. They broke out of the trees, and Ramsay saw the water again. Built into it, at this point, was a rambling wooden pier. There was a house and a fishing shanty. Tied to a stake in a patch of green grass, a sad-eyed brown cow munched placidly on a five-pound whitefish. Tied to the pier, a saucy twenty-six-foot Mackinaw boat, much like the _Spray_, bobbed up and down. Nearer the beach was another boat, evidently a sadly worn one.

Nets of various kinds were strung on reels close to the lake.

The house's door opened, and a ferocious little black dog snarled toward them. Showing white teeth, foaming at the mouth, he hurled himself straight at the visitors. Hans laughed and swung down from the cart, and as soon as he did the little black dog leaped about him to wag an almost furious welcome. Hans grinned and knelt to tickle the dog's ears.

"Like most Frenchmen, you can do nothing unless you do it violently," he soothed. "Where is your master?"

The house's door opened and a man, whom at first Ramsay thought was a boy, flung himself out. Barely five feet tall, he was dressed in breeches, leather leggings with colored fringes and a shirt that seemed to sport every color in the rainbow. He threw himself at Hans.

"_Mon ami!_" he screamed. "My friend! It has been so long, so very long since you honored us with a visit! Tell me what has kept you away for so very long?"