ighting for a
half-hour in the first of the rapids and getting thoroughly wet and
bedraggled they had to give it up and reverse the process, letting the
birch-bark drift down to the safe dockage again.

While they were resting from their labors, and the hampered half of the
towing squad was wringing the water from her skirts, Prime looked at his
watch.

"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed. "It is noon already! I thought I was
beginning to feel that way inside. Why didn't we have sense enough to
take a bite along with us when we left camp this morning?"

"Oh, if you are going into the whys, why didn't we have sense enough to
know that we couldn't handle the canoe? How far have we come?"

Prime shook his head. "You couldn't prove it by me. A part of the time
it seemed to me that we were bettering a mile a minute." He got up and
hobbled back and forth on the little beach to work the canoe-cramp out
of his knees. "It looks to me as if we are up against it good and hard;
the canoe is here, and the dunnage is up yonder. Which do we do: carry
the canoe to the dunnage, or the dunnage to the canoe? It's a heavenly
choice either way around. What do you say?"

Lucetta voted at once for the canoe-carrying, if it were at all
possible. So much, she said, they owed to the owners, who had every
right to expect to find their property where they had left it. Again
Prime was tempted to say hard things about the ghosts which so
stubbornly refused to be laid, and again he denied himself.

"The canoe it is," he responded grimly, but by the time they had dragged
the light but unwieldy craft out of the water and part way up the bank
they were convinced that the other alternative was the only one. A
short portage they might have made, or possibly a long one, if they had
known enough to turn the birch-bark bottom-side up and carry it on their
heads _voyageur_-fashion. But they still had this to learn.

"It's a frost," was Prime's decision after they had tugged and stumbled
a little way with the clumsy burden knocking at their legs. "The
mountain won't go to Mohammed--that much is perfectly plain. Are you
game for a long portage with the camp outfit? It seems to be the only
thing there is left for us to do."

The young woman was game, and since they were on the wrong side of the
river they put the canoe into the water again and paddled to the other
side, leaving the birch-bark drawn out upon the bank of the eddy-pool.
From that they went o