is too fast to
pole against successfully more than half the time; the banks are too
overgrown for tracking with the tow-line. About the only system is to
get there in the best way possible. Usually this meant that Dick waded
at the bow and Sam at the stern, leaning strongly against the current.
Bowlders of all sorts harassed the free passage, stones rolled under the
feet, holes of striking unexpectedness lay in wait, and the water was
icy cold. Once in a while they were able to paddle a few hundred feet.
Then both usually sat astride the ends of the canoe, their legs hanging
in the water in order that the drippings might not fall inside. As this
was the early summer, they occasionally kicked against trees to drive
enough of the numbness from their legs so that they could feel the
bottom.

It was hard work and cold work and wearing, for it demanded its exact
toll for each mile, and was as insistent for the effort at weary night
as at fresh morning.

Dick, in the vigour of his young strength, seemed to like it. The
leisure of travel with the Indians had barely stretched his muscles.
Here was something against which he could exert his utmost force. He
rejoiced in it, taking great lungfuls of air, bending his shoulders,
breaking through these outer defences of the North with wanton
exuberance, blind to everything, deaf to everything, oblivious of all
other mental and physical sensations except the delight of applying his
skill and strength to the subduing of the stream.

But Sam, patient, uncomplaining, enduring, retained still the broader
outlook. He, too, fought the water and the cold, adequately and
strongly, but it was with the unconsciousness of long habit. His mind
recognised the Forest as well as the Stream. The great physical thrill
over the poise between perfect health and the opposing of difficulties
he had left behind him with his youth; as indeed he had, in a lesser
sense, gained with his age an indifference to discomfort. He was
cognisant of the stillness of the woods, the presence of the birds and
beasts, the thousand subtleties that make up the personality of the
great forest.

And with the strange sixth sense of the accustomed woodsman Sam felt, as
they travelled, that something was wrong. The impression did not come to
him through any of the accustomed channels. In fact, it hardly reached
his intellect as yet. Through long years his intuitions had adapted
themselves to their environment. The subtle inf