avagely. "Hold your tongue,
can't you?"

An hour's wild walking brought them to the end of the gorge, and
looking down the rather steep face of the hill, to the widening river,
the white man carefully surveyed the banks. After a time he found what
he was looking for--a pile of debris heaped against a bluff, whose hard
rock resisted the action of the water. It was about a quarter of a mile
away and on the same bank of the river as himself. Still in silence he
began to drop down the face of the hill, and sometimes climbing over
moss-grown rocks, sometimes wading waist-high in the river itself, he
made his way to the heap of debris. It was the drift-pile made by the
river, which at this point cast out from its bosom logs and trees and
all manner of debris brought over the falls and down the gorge, a great
heap piled in inextricable confusion as high as a tall fir tree, and as
broad as a church.

Feverishly, Gerald Ainley began to wade round its wide base; and the
Indian also joined in the search, poking among the drift-logs and
occasionally tumbling one aside. Then the Indian gave a sharp grunt,
and out of the pile dragged a piece of wreckage that was obviously part
of the side and bow of a canoe. He shouted to Ainley, who hurried
scramblingly over a heap of the obstructing logs, and who, after one
look at that which the Indian had retrieved, stood there shaking like
wind-stricken corn; his face white and ghastly, his eyes full of agony.
The Indian put a brown finger on a symbol painted on the bows, with the
letters H. B. C. beneath. Both of them recognized the piece of wreckage
as belonging to the canoe in which Helen Yardely had left the camp, and
the Indian, with a glance at the gorge which had vomited the wreckage,
gave emphatic utterance to his belief.

"All gone."

Gerald Ainley made no reply. He had no doubt that what the Indian said
was true, and the truth was terrible enough. Turning away he began anew
to search the drift-pile, looking now for the body of a dead girl,
though with but little hope of finding it. For an hour he searched in
vain, then began to scramble down river, searching the bank. A mile
below the first drift-pile he came upon a second, caught by a sand-bar,
that, thrusting itself out in the water, snared the smaller debris.
This also he searched diligently, with no result; and after wandering a
little further down the river without finding anything, returned to
where the Indian awaited him.