The Wendigo, Algernon Blackwood [well read books txt] 📗

craft ofbirch bark like a thing of life, answering cheerfully all hiscompanion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted. On suchoccasions men lose the superficial, worldly distinctions; they becomehuman beings working together for a common end. Simpson, the employer,and Défago the employed, among these primitive forces, were simply--twomen, the "guider" and the "guided." Superior knowledge, of course,assumed control, and the younger man fell without a second thought intothe quasi-subordinate position. He never dreamed of objecting whenDéfago dropped the "Mr.," and addressed him as "Say, Simpson," or"Simpson, boss," which was invariably the case before they reached thefarther shore after a stiff paddle of twelve miles against a head wind.He only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it at all.

For this "divinity student" was a young man of parts and character,though as yet, of course, untraveled; and on this trip--the first timehe had seen any country but his own and little Switzer