d his head up and said it all would be well
sometime. Perhaps, though he still had a little courage left, Aladdin
was the more to be pitied of the two: he was not only desperately
responsible for it all, but full of imagination and the horrible
things he had read. Margaret, like most women, suffered a little from
self-centration, and to her the trunk of a birch was just a nasty old
wet tree, but to Aladdin it was the clammy limb of one drowned,
and drawn from the waters to stand in eternal unrest. At length the
stumbling progress brought them to a shore of the island: a slippery
ledge of rock, past whose feet the water slipped hurriedly, steaming
with fog as if it had been hot, two big leaning birches, and a ruddy
mink that slipped like winking into a hole. The river, evident for only
a few yards, became lost in the fog, and where they were could only be
guessed, and which way the tide was setting could only be learned by
experiment. Aladdin planted a twig at the precise edge of the water,
and they sat down to watch. Stubbornly and unwillingly the water receded
from the twig, and they knew that the tide was running out.

"That's the way home," said Aladdin. Margaret looked wistfully
down-stream, her eyes as misty as the fog.

"If we had the boat we could go now," said Aladdin.

Then he sat moody, evolving enterprise, and neither spoke for a long
time.

"Marg'ret," said Aladdin, at length, "help me find a big log near the
water."

"What you going to do, 'Laddin?"

"You 'll see. Help look."

They crept along the edge of the island, now among the close-growing
trees and now on the bare strip between them and the water, until at
length they came upon a big log, lying like some gnarled amphibian half
in the river and half on the dry land.

"Help push," said Aladdin.

They could move it only a little, not enough.

"Wait till I get a lever," said Aladdin. He went, and came back with a
long, stiff little birch, that, growing recklessly in the thin soil over
a rock, had been willing to yield to the persuasion of a child and come
up by the roots. And then, Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying
and grunting, the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until
now, for she was too young to understand about daring and unselfishness,
Margaret had considered the log-launching as a game invented by Aladdin
to while away the dreary time; but now she realized, from the look in
the pale, set, freckly, almost comica