This last, however,
counted for little more with any one else. Those who knew the lake best
were best content to leave it alone. As a source of pleasure it had too
many perils: "treacherous" was the common word. Its treachery was reserved,
of course, for the smiling period of summer; especially did the great
monster lie in wait on summer's Sunday afternoons. Then the sun would shine
on its vast placid bosom and the breeze play gently, tempting the swimmer
toward its borders and the light pleasure craft toward its depths. And
then, in mid-afternoon, a sudden disastrous change; a quick gale from the
north, with a wide whipping-up of white caps; and the morrow's newspapers
told of bathers drowned in the undertow, of frail canoes dashed to pieces
against piers and breakwaters, and of gay, beflagged steam-launches swamped
by the newly-risen sea miles from shore: the toll of fickle, superheated
August. But in the late autumn the immense, savage creature was more
frankly itself: rude, blustery, tyrannical,--no more a smiling, cruel
hypocrite. It warned you, often and openly, if warning you would take.
It was on the last Sunday afternoon in October that Cope and Amy
Leffingwell were strolling along its edge.
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