The weather seemed
slightly warmer, and a wind was rising from the west, but it was not
strong enough to impede them.

After breakfast, they repacked the kit on the toboggan. The spot had
been home for a night; now nothing was left except a pile of crushed
twigs and a few black brands on the trampled snow.

The travelers were fresh again; now they settled down to a long, steady
stroke that carried them on rapidly. Three times they had to land to
pass round open rapids or dangerous ice, but about eleven o'clock
Macgregor saw what he had been looking for. It was a spot where
several trees had been cut down on the shore. A rather faint trail
showed through the cedar thickets. It was the beginning of the main
portage that ran three miles northwest, straight across country to the
Abitibi River. They had been mortally afraid of overrunning the spot.

They boiled the noon kettle of tea to fortify themselves for the long
crossing. Then they unshipped the runners from the toboggan, put on
their moccasins and snowshoes, and started ashore across a range of
low, densely wooded hills.

The trail was blazed at long intervals, but not cleared, and it was
hard, exasperating work to get the toboggan through the snowy tangle.
After two hours they came out on the crest of a hill overlooking a
great river that ran like a gleaming steel-blue ribbon far into the
north.

"The Abitibi!" cried Macgregor.

They had come a good seventy miles from Waverley. At that rate, they
might expect to reach their destination the next day; and, greatly
encouraged, they coasted on the toboggan down to the ice, and set out
again on skates.

During the tramp the sky had grown hazy, and the northwest wind was
blowing stronger. For some time it was not troublesome, for it came
from the left, but it continued to freshen, and the clouds darkened
ominously.

Late in the afternoon the travelers came suddenly upon the second of
the known landmarks. From the west a smaller river, nameless, as far
as they knew, poured past a bluff of black granite into the Abitibi,
making a fifty-yard stretch of open water that tumbled and foamed with
a hoarse uproar among ice-bound boulders. Here they had to change
their course, for according to Macgregor's calculation, it was about
fifty miles up this river that the cabin stood.

Again they went ashore, and after struggling through two hundred yards
of dense thickets reached the little nameless river from the