res of the river grew mightier in their stillness and
their grandeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places brooded over
the world. To Kent it was as if they were drifting through Paradise.
Occasionally he found it necessary to work the big sweep, for still
water was gradually giving way to a swifter current.

Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform. It seemed to him
that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left farther
and still farther behind them. Watching the shores, looking ahead,
listening for sound that might come from behind--at times possessed of
the exquisite thrills of children in their happiness--Kent and Marette
found the gulf of strangeness passing swiftly away from between them.

They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the death of
John Barkley. But Kent told of his days in the North, of his aloneness,
of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest wildernesses. And
from that he went away back into dim and distant yesterdays, alive with
mellowed memories of boyhood days spent on a farm. To all these things
Marette listened with glowing eyes, with low laughter, or with breath
that rose or fell with his own emotions.

She told of her own days down at school and of their appalling
loneliness; of childhood spent in the forests; of the desire to live
there always. But she did not speak intimately of herself or her life
in its more vital aspects; she said nothing of the home in the Valley
of Silent Men, nothing of father or mother, sisters or brothers. There
was no embarrassment in her omissions. And Kent did not question. He
knew that those were among the things she would tell him when that
promised hour came, the hour when he would tell her they were safe.

There began to possess him now a growing eagerness for this hour, when
they should leave the river and take to the forests. He explained to
Marette why they could not float on indefinitely. The river was the one
great artery through which ran the blood of all traffic to the far
North. It was patrolled. Sooner or later they would be discovered. In
the forests, with a thousand untrod trails to choose, they would be
safe. He had only one reason for keeping to the river until they passed
through the Death Chute. It would carry them beyond a great swampy
region to the westward through which it would be impossible for them to
make their way at this season of the year. Otherwise he would have gone
ashore now.