ers where the
shadow of the canoe was unbroken in the blue depths--streamed through
his mind, but they were not yet bright enough for him to seize and hold.

He enjoyed the first few hours of paddling, but in the long, warm
afternoon came indolence, and they were both willing to glide with the
current and watch the ever-changing vista of the shore. For the first
time since they had come into the real North, Ben found opportunity to
observe and study the country.

Already they were out of sight of the last vestige of a habitation; and
the evergreen forests pushed down to the water's edge. From the middle
of the stream the woods appeared only as a dark wall, but this was
immeasurably fascinating to Ben. It suggested mystery, adventure; yet
its deeper appeal, the thing that stirred him and thrilled him to the
quick, he could neither understand nor analyze.

Sometimes a little clump of trees stood apart, and from their shape he
identified them as the incomparable spruce, perhaps the most
distinguished and beautiful of all the evergreens. He marked their great
height, their slender forms, their dark foliage that ever seemed to be
silvered with frost; and they seemed to him to answer, to the fullest
extent, some vague expectation of which he had scarcely been aware.

The wild life of the river filled him with speechless delight. Sometimes
he saw the waters break and gleam at the leap of a mighty salmon--the
king fish of the North on his spring rush to the headwaters where he
would spawn and die--and often the canoe sent flocks of waterfowl into
flight. Ben dimly felt that on the tree-clad shores larger, more
glorious living creatures were standing, hiding, watching the canoe
glide past. The thought thrilled him.

Late afternoon, and they worked closer to the shore. They were watching
for a place to land. But because the shadows of twilight were already
falling, the forest itself was hardly more vivid to their eyes. Once it
seemed to Ben that he saw the underbrush move and waver at the water's
edge, and his heart leaped; but whatever stirred kept itself concealed.
And now, in the gray of twilight, Ezram saw the place to land.

It was a small lagoon into which a creek emptied, and beyond was an open
meadow, found so often and so unexpectedly in the North woods. Swiftly
Ben turned the canoe into shore.

Ezram climbed out and made fast, and so busy was he with his work that
he did not glance at Ben, otherwise he might have