The girl opened her eyes. "I'd rather hoped--I had dreamed it all," she
told him miserably.

The words touched him. He looked into her face, moved by the girlishness
and appeal about the red, wistful mouth and the dark, brimming eyes.
"It's pretty tough, but I'm afraid it's true," he said, more kindly than
he had spoken since they had left the landing. "Do you want me to cook
breakfast and bring it to you here?"

"No, I want to do that part myself. It makes the time pass faster to
have something to do."

He went to look for fresh meat, and she slipped into her outer garments.
She found water already hot in a bucket suspended from the cooking rack,
permitting a simple but refreshing toilet. With Ben's comb she
straightened out the snarls in her dark tresses, parted them, and
braided them into two dusky ropes to be worn Indian fashion in front of
her shoulders. Then she prepared the meal.

It was a problem to tax the ingenuity of any housekeeper,--to prepare an
appetizing breakfast out of such limited supplies. But in this art,
particularly, the forest girls are trained. A quantity of rice had been
left from the stew of the preceding night, and mixing it with flour and
water and salt, she made a batter. Sooner or later fresh fat could be
obtained from game to use in frying: to-day she saw no course other than
to melt a piece of candle. The reverberating roar of the rifle a hundred
yards down the river bank, however, suggested another alternative.

A moment later Ben appeared--and the breakfast problem was solved. It
was another of the woods people that his rifle had brought down,--one
that wore fur rather than feathers and which had just come in from night
explorations along the river bank. It was a yearling black bear--really
no larger than a cub--and he had an inch of fat under his furry hide.

The fat he yielded was not greatly different from lard; and the
pancakes--or fritters, as Ben termed them--were soon frying merrily.
Served with hot tea they constituted a filling and satisfactory
breakfast for both travelers.

After breakfast they took to the river, yielding themselves once more to
the whims of the current. Once more the steep banks whipped past them in
ever-changing vista; and Ben had to strain at his paddle to guide the
craft between the perilous crags. The previous day the high waters had
carried them safely above the boulders of the river bed: to-day some of
the larger crags all but scraped the bottom