to-day, although the life that brought it into being has been gone
from it these many years.

In midsummer Orde found the river trail most unfamiliar in
appearance. Hardly did he recognise it in some places. It
possessed a wide, leisurely expansiveness, an indolent luxury, a
lazy invitation born of broad green leaves, deep and mysterious
shadows, the growth of ferns, docks, and the like cool in the shade
of the forest, the shimmer of aspens and poplars through the heat,
the green of tangling vines, the drone of insects, the low-voiced
call of birds, the opulent splashing of sun-gold through the woods,
quite lacking to the hard, tight season in which his river work was
usually performed. What, in the early year, had been merely a whip
of brush, now had become a screen through whose waving, shifting
interstices he caught glimpses of the river flowing green and cool.
What had been bare timber amongst whose twigs and branches the full
daylight had shone unobstructed, now had clothed itself in foliage
and leaned over to make black and mysterious the water that flowed
beneath. Countless insects hovered over the polished surface of
that water. Dragon-flies cruised about. Little birds swooped
silently down and fluttered back, intent on their tiny prey. Water-
bugs skated hither and thither in apparently purposeless diagonals.
Once in a great while the black depths were stirred. A bass rolled
lazily over, carrying with him his captured insect, leaving on the
surface of the water concentric rings which widened and died away.

The trail led the crew through many minor labours, all of which
consumed time. At Reed's Mill Orde entered into diplomatic
negotiations with Old Man Reed, whom he found singularly amenable.
The skirmish in the spring seemed to have taken all the fight out of