to himself.

"That's all right," he said, as he saw Denzil on the stretcher. "We'll
get on home now."

"Home?" asked his son.

"Yes, Montreal--to-night," replied his father. "The leg has to be set."

"Why don't you set it?" asked the boy.

The river-master gazed at him attentively. "Well, I might, with your
help," he said. "Come along."

CHAPTER II. ELEVEN YEARS PASS

Eleven years had passed since Denzil's fall, and in that time much
history had been made. Carnac Grier, true to his nature, had travelled
from incident to incident, from capacity to capacity, apparently without
system, yet actually with the keenest desire to fulfil himself; with an
honesty as inveterate as his looks were good and his character filled
with dark recesses. In vain had his father endeavoured to induce him to
enter the lumber business; to him it seemed too conventional and fixed.

Yet, in his way, he knew the business well. By instinct, over the
twenty-five years of his life, he had observed and become familiar with
the main features of the work. He had once or twice even buried himself
in the shanties of the backwoods, there to inhale and repulse the fetid
air, to endure the untoward, half-savage life, the clean, strong food,
the bitter animosities and the savage friendships. It was a land where
sunshine travelled, and in the sun the bright, tuneful birds made lively
the responsive world. Sometimes an eagle swooped down the stream; again
and again, hawks, and flocks of pigeons which frequented the lonely
groves on the river-side, made vocal the world of air; flocks of wild
ducks, or geese, went whirring down the long spaces of water between the
trees on either bank; and some one with a fiddle or a concertina made
musical the evening, while the singing voices of rough habitants rang
through the air.

It was all spirited; it smelt good; it felt good; but it was not for
Carnac. When he had a revolt against anything in life, the grim storm
scenes of winter in the shanties under the trees and the snow-swept
hills came to his mind's eye. The summer life of the river, and what
is called "running the river," had for him great charms. The smell of
hundreds of thousands of logs in the river, the crushed bark, the slimy
ooze were all suggestive of life in the making. But the savage seclusion
of the wild life in winter repelled his senses. Besides, the lumber
business meant endless figures and measurements in stuffy offices and he
retrea