hores were
crowding closer now. The firs, dark and melancholy, were frowning down;
sharp crags arose like ragged teeth; to right, to left, ahead, and
between them the river boiled and lashed itself into fury, pitching
headlong on and on down the throat of the yawning channel. The tiny
canoe flung between the rocks like a shuttle. Twice its keel shivered,
rabbit-wise, in the force of crossing currents; once, far above the
tumult, came a wild, anxious voice from the shore, but neither Bob
nor his passenger gave heed. The dash of that wildcat rapid left no
second of time for replying or turning one's eyelid; it was one long,
breathless, hurling plunge, that got into their blood like a fever. Then
presently the riot seemed all behind them. The savage music of the river
grew fainter and fainter, the canoe slipped through the exhausted waters
silently as a snake. A moment more, and the bow beached on a strip of
yellow sand, secure, steadfast, triumphant. The glorious cruise was
over.

A little group of scared, white-faced men huddled together on shore, the
handsome young aide-de-camp reaching down his eager hands, which shook
with anxiety. "Oh, Your Excellency," he exclaimed, "how _could_ you run
such a risk, and with only this boy to pilot you?"

"Bob and I ran away," said Lord Dunbridge, as, breathless but happy,
he sprang from the canoe. "We ran away for a little holiday just by
ourselves. I would not have missed it for the world." Then, more
seriously, he added, "Gentlemen, if I could think that my Prime Minister
and the Government at Ottawa could steer the Ship of State as splendidly
as Bobbie steered that canoe, I would never have another wrinkle on my
forehead or another grey hair on my head."

Little Wolf-Willow

Old Beaver-tail hated many things, but most of all he hated the
North-West Mounted Police. Not that they had ever molested or worried
him in his far corner of the Crooked Lakes Indian Reserve, but they
stood for the enforcing of the white man's laws, and old Beaver-Tail
hated the white man. He would sit for hours together in his big
tepee counting his piles of furs, smoking, grumbling and storming at
the inroads of the palefaces on to his lands and hunting grounds.
Consequently it was an amazing surprise to everybody when he consented
to let his eldest son, Little Wolf-Willow, go away to attend the Indian
School in far-off Manitoba. But old Beaver-Tail explained with rare
appreciation his reasons f