MISQUAH — The envelope left the coffee tin behind the Daybreak’s register at 1:40 p.m. Saturday in the hands of Pat Reinholt, who walked it four blocks down Birch and around onto Second with a small procession forming behind her, and who declined three separate offers to carry it. It was placed on the bar at Mud Lake Brewing Co. at 1:52, still taped, and opened at 2:30 by Annika Holt with a paring knife borrowed from the kitchen.

Sixty-one guesses were read aloud, in the order they came out. Nineteen said Big Pelican. Fourteen said Loon. Eleven were variations on Whitefish. Three said Cultured Cow, and were read with the dignity the occasion afforded. One was illegible and was read as “illegible,” to applause.

And four said Mud Lake: Dorothy Knutson, president of the Mud Lake Association; her brother-in-law Vern Knutson; Sigrid Pelto, who declined to explain her reasoning and referred questions to the sky; and one Rachel Vinh, age nine, who wrote it at her grandmother’s dictation and who was hoisted onto the bar to say so.

There was no prize. There had never been a prize. The Holts gave them the first four pours anyway, and Dorothy Knutson, holding a glass of a beer named after the lake she has defended for eleven years to a membership of two, delivered what several present described as the speech of her life, and what she describes as “two sentences and I’m not sorry.” The sentences were: “It is a perfectly good lake. It has always been a perfectly good lake.”

The Association’s annual meeting, historically attended by Dorothy and one other person, is the second Saturday of July. She has been asked repeatedly since Saturday whether she expects a different turnout next year. Her answer, delivered each time without visible emotion, is that the Association has managed for eleven years with a membership of two and “will manage with whatever shows up.” She has already ordered more chairs.