It is not, however, exactly the pleasure of exercising ingenuity in contrivance that I refer to here; for the teacher has not, after all, a great deal of absolute contriving to do, or, rather, his principal business is not contriving.

And so I did push off with the pole, and I pusht and paddled maybe the half of an hour, for, indeed it was all a clumsy contriving, and mayhap I the more so in my labours.

Could they have looked into the future, too, they would have seen that in the Far West they were to face dangers and difficulties of which they had as yet never dreamed and were to be the victims of the malicious contrivings of Bill Bender and our old, acquaintance, Jack Curtiss.