hing. She must have
looked like the spirit of primeval silence as she stood at such moments,
lifting her shawl from her head to listen; then she went on. She knew
where a boat had by chance been left that day; it was a small rough
boat, lying close under the roots of a pine tree, and tied to its trunk.
In this she bestowed her bundle, and untying the string, pushed from the
shore. She could hardly see the opposite side of the little Ahwewee in
the darkness; she rowed at once into the midst of its rapid current;
once there, she dipped her oars to steer rather than to propel. She
travelled swiftly with the black stream.

For half an hour or more she was only intent upon steering her boat.
Then, when she had come about three miles from the falls, she was in
still water, and began rowing with all her strength to make the boat
shoot forward as rapidly as before.

The water was as still now as if the river had widened and deepened into
an inland sea; yet in the darkness to all appearance the river was as
narrow, the outline of the trees on either side appearing black and high
just within sight. When the moon rose this mystery of nature was
revealed, for the river was a lake, spreading far and wide on either
side. The lake was caused by dams built farther down the stream, and
the forest that had covered the ground before still reared itself above
the water, the bare dead trees standing thick, except in the narrow,
winding passage of the original stream.

The moon rose large, very large indeed, and very yellow. There was smoke
of distant forest fires in the dry hot air, which turned the moon as
golden as a pane of amber glass. There was no fear of fire in the forest
through which the boat was passing other than that cold pretence of
yellow flames, the broken reflections of the moon on the wet mirror in
which the trees were growing. These trees would not burn; they had been
drowned long ago! They stood up now like corpses or ghosts, rising from
the deathly flood, lifeless and smooth; ghastly, in that they retained
the naked shape that they had had when alive. To the east the reflection
of the moon was seen for a mile or more under their grey outstretched
branches, and on all sides its light penetrated, showing through what a
strange dead wilderness the one small fragile boat was travelling.

Very little of the feeling of the place entered the mind of the girl who
was working at her oars with such strong, swift strokes. Every