--" The speaker here paused in his
enthusiasm, remarking seriously, "I'm thinking there's other matters o'
mair importance before us the noo than moths. Your faithers went doon
the Athabasca, you said?"

"Yes; in a canoe," said Bob.

Mackintosh shook his head ominously.

"That's bad. I suppose they'd never been there before--indeed, it was
no' possible, or they'd never have made the attempt yesterday."

"Is it--dangerous?" questioned Holden, in an undertone of dread, for the
man's voice conveyed no small impression of the risks the voyagers had
run. "We had not thought of danger in the river. We only thought of
moose."

Mackintosh grunted uneasily.

"The river is more treacherous than any moose. There's a terrible narrow
bight atween cliffs where it runs like lightning, and then shoots in a
waterfall into the Silver Lake. Man! I've seen great trunks o' pine
giants flung through yon opening like wee arrows a hundred feet in the
air afore they touched water again."

"Then a canoe----"

"If it reached so far in safety it would shoot likewise."

"You think it possible that the canoe _might_ pass the gully unharmed?"
Bob then questioned. It was always his nature to struggle for the
brightest view, and the man's answer was somewhat in the same spirit.

"It's no' the way o' Skipper Mackintosh to find trouble until trouble
finds him. He's been in a' the back corners o' Europe, Africa, India,
China, and America; and, if he learned nothing mair from his travels, he
learned this: troubles are easier conquered when you meet them wi' a
firm lip at the proper time. But the man that moans before he kens what
he's moaning about--well, it's little strength he's got left when the
fight really begins."

"Yet if, as you say, the Athabasca is so dangerous----" began Alf, when
he was again interrupted with kindly roughness.

"If? Laddie, laddie, are you forgetting that there's a Hand that could
guide the frailest birch-bark safely through Niagara itsel'? And I doot
not that I'm right when I say that it's my opeenion that that same Hand
has no' been very far from your faithers in their plight. Does either o'
you ken anything o' this by chance?"

As he spoke Mackintosh dived his hand into the hip-pocket of his
overalls and produced a white handkerchief which he spread out upon the
ground by the fire. The boys bent forward, and immediately Alf
exclaimed--

"That's my father's! See! His initials are at the corner. Where did you