he was struck by a difference in
the colour of the water of the two branches. The right-hand fork was a
clear brown, the other greenish with a milky tinge. Now brown water, as
everybody knows, comes from swamps or muskegs, while green water is the
product of melting snow and ice. Stonor took the left-hand branch.

Shortly afterwards he was rewarded by a sight of the spot where they had
made their first spell of the day. Landing, he found the ashes of their
fire still warm; they could not have been gone more than an hour. This
was an unexpected gain; some accident of travel must have delayed them.
Embarking, he bent to his paddle with a renewed hope. Surely by going
without a meal himself he ought to come on them before they finished
their second spell.

But the river was only half of its former volume now, and the rapids
were more brawling, and more tedious to ascend. However, he consoled
himself with the thought that if they held him back they would delay the
dug-out no less. The river was very lovely on these upper reaches; in
his anxiety to get on he scarcely marked that at the moment, but
afterwards he remembered its park-like shores, its forget-me-nots and
raspberry-blossoms, and the dappled sunlight falling through the
aspen-foliage. It was no different from the rivers of his boyhood in a
sheltered land, with swimming-holes at the foot of the little rapids:
only the fenced fields and the quiet cattle were lacking above the
banks, and church-spires in the distant vistas.

Within an hour Stonor himself became the victim of one of the ordinary
hazards of river-travel. In a rapid one of his paddles broke in half;
the current carried him broadside on a rock, and a great piece of bark
was torn from the side of his frail craft. Landing, he surveyed the
damage, grinding his teeth with angry disappointment. It meant the loss
of all he had so hardly gained on the dug-out.

To find a suitable piece of bark, and spruce-gum to cement it with,
required a considerable search in the bush. It then had to be sewed on
with needle and thread, the edges gummed, and the gum given time to dry
partly, in the heat of the fire. The afternoon was well advanced before
he got afloat again, and darkness compelled him to camp in the spot
where they had made their second, that is to say, the mid-afternoon,
spell.

The next two days, his third and fourth in the river, were without
especial incident. The river maintained its sylvan character