Dick Herron and Sam Bolton sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. It was dim morning. Through the haze that shrouded the river figures moved. Occasionally a sharp sound eddied the motionless silence--a paddle dropped, the prow of a canoe splashed as it was lifted to the water, the tame crow uttered a squawk. Little by little the groups dwindled. Invisible canoes were setting out, beyond the limits of vision. Soon there remained but a few scattered, cowled figures, the last women hastily loading their craft that they might not be left behind. Now these, too, thrust through the gray curtain of fog. The white men were alone.

With the passing of the multitude once again the North came close. Spying on the deserted camp an hundred smaller woods creatures fearfully approached, bright-eyed, alert, ready to retreat, but eager to investigate for scraps of food that might have been left. Squirrels poised in spruce-trees, leaped boldly through space, or hurried across little open stretches of ground. Meat-hawks, their fluffy plumage smoothed to alertness, swooped here and there. Momentary and hasty scurryings in the dead leaves attested the presence of other animals, faint chirpings and rustlings the presence of other birds, following these their most courageous foragers. In a day the Indian camp would have taken on the character of the forest; in a month, an ancient ruin, it would have fitted as accurately with its surroundings as an acorn in the cup.

Now the twisted vapours drained from among the tree-trunks into the river bed, where it lay, not more than five feet deep, accurately marking the course of the stream. The sun struck across the tops of the trees. A chickadee, upside down in bright-eyed contemplation, uttered two flute-notes. Instantly a winter-wren, as though at a signal, went into ecstatic ravings. The North was up and about her daily business.

Sam Bolton and Dick finally got under way. After an hour they arrived opposite the mouth of a tributary stream. This Sam announced as the Mattawishguia. Immediately they turned to it.

The Mattawishguia would be variously described; in California as a river, in New England as a brook, in Superior country as a trout stream. It is an hundred feet wide, full of rapids, almost all fast water, and, except in a few still pools, from a foot to two feet deep. The bottom is of round stones.

Travel by canoe in such a stream is a farce. The water is too fast to pole against successfully more than half the time; the banks are too overgrown for tracking with the tow-line. About the only system is to get there in the best way possible. Usually this meant that Dick waded at the bow and Sam at the stern, leaning strongly against the current. Bowlders of all sorts harassed the free passage, stones rolled under the feet, holes of striking unexpectedness lay in wait, and the water was icy cold. Once in a while they were able to paddle a few hundred feet. Then both usually sat astride the ends of the canoe, their legs hanging in the water in order that the drippings might not fall inside. As this was the early summer, they occasionally kicked against trees to drive enough of the numbness from their legs so that they could feel the bottom.

It was hard work and cold work and wearing, for it demanded its exact toll for each mile, and was as insistent for the effort at weary night as at fresh morning.

Dick, in the vigour of his young strength, seemed to like it. The leisure of travel with the Indians had barely stretched his muscles. Here was something against which he could exert his utmost force. He rejoiced in it, taking great lungfuls of air, bending his shoulders, breaking through these outer defences of the North with wanton exuberance, blind to everything, deaf to everything, oblivious of all other mental and physical sensations except the delight of applying his skill and strength to the subduing of the stream.

But Sam, patient, uncomplaining, enduring, retained still the broader outlook. He, too, fought the water and the cold, adequately and strongly, but it was with the unconsciousness of long habit. His mind recognised the Forest as well as the Stream. The great physical thrill over the poise between perfect health and the opposing of difficulties he had left behind him with his youth; as indeed he had, in a lesser sense, gained with his age an indifference to discomfort. He was cognisant of the stillness of the woods, the presence of the birds and beasts, the thousand subtleties that make up the personality of the great forest.

And with the strange sixth sense of the accustomed woodsman Sam felt, as they travelled, that something was wrong. The impression did not come to him through any of the accustomed channels. In fact, it hardly reached his intellect as yet. Through long years his intuitions had adapted themselves to their environment. The subtle influences the forest always disengaged found in the delicately attuned fibres of his being that which vibrated in unison with them. Now this adjustment was in some way disturbed. To Sam Bolton the forest was _different_, and this made him uneasy without his knowing why. From time to time he stopped suddenly, every nerve quivering, his nostrils wide, like some wild thing alert for danger. And always the other five senses, on which his mind depended, denied the sixth. Nothing stirred but the creatures of the wilderness.

Yet always the impression persisted. It was easily put to flight, and yet it always returned. Twice, while Dick rested in the comfort of tobacco, Sam made long detours back through the woods, looking for something, he knew not what; uneasy, he knew not why. Always he found the forest empty. Everything, well ordered, was in its accustomed place. He returned to the canoe, shaking his head, unable to rid himself of the sensation of something foreign to the established order of things.

At noon the men drew ashore on a little point of rock. There they boiled tea over a small fire, and ate the last of their pilot's bread, together with bacon and the cold meat of partridges. By now the sun was high and the air warm. Tepid odours breathed from the forest, and the songs of familiar homely birds. Little heated breezes puffed against the travellers' cheeks. In the sun's rays their garments steamed and their muscles limbered.

Yet even here Sam Bolton was unable to share the relaxation of mind and body his companion so absolutely enjoyed. Twice he paused, food suspended, his mouth open, to listen intently for a moment, then to finish carrying his hand to his mouth with the groping of vague perplexity. Once he arose to another of his purposeless circles through the woods. Dick paid no attention to these things. In the face of danger his faculties would be as keenly on the stretch as his comrade's; but now, the question one merely of difficult travel, the responsibility dele............