he tent door and soon afterwards went to sleep.

They launched the canoes in the cool of the morning, while the mist
drifted among the pines and the sun came up behind the forest. The
stream ran fast and as they toiled up river a brawny half-breed waded
through the shallows with the tracking line. Thirlwell stood in the
stern, using the pole, and Agatha noted the smooth precision of his
movements. He wasted no effort and did not seem to be working hard, but
he did what he meant and the hint of force was plainer than when he
talked. Two _Metis_ were occupied with the canoe behind and as they
poled and tracked they sang old songs made by the early French
_voyageurs_. Although the river had shrunk far down the bank, there was
water enough for the canoes, and Agatha remarked how skilfully the men
avoided the rocks in the channel and drove the craft up angry rapids.

When they nooned upon a gravel bank near the end of a wide lake it was
fiercely hot. The calm water, flashed like polished steel, and Agatha
could hardly see the flames of the snapping fire; the smoke went up in
thin gray wreaths that were almost invisible. A clump of juniper grew
among the stones and she sat down in the shade and looked about with
dazzled eyes. A line of driftwood, hammered by the ice and bleached
white by the sun, marked the subsidence of the water from its high,
spring level. Small islands broke the shining surface, some covered with
stunted trees and some quite bare. The rocks about the beach were
curiously worn, but Agatha knew they had been ground smooth by drifting
floes. Behind the beach, the forest rolled back in waves of somber green
to a bold ridge that faded into leaden thunder-clouds.

The landscape was wild, and although it had nothing of the savage
grandeur Agatha expected, she thought it forbidding. Its influence was
insidious; one was not daunted by a glance, but realized by degrees its
grimness and desolation. The North was not dramatic, except perhaps when
the ice broke up; the forces that molded the rugged land worked with a
stern quietness. It looked as if they also molded the character of the
men who braved the rigors of the frozen waste. The _Metis_ were not
vivacious like the French _habitants_; they were marked by a certain
grave melancholy and their paddling songs had a plaintive undertone. Yet
their vigor and stubbornness were obvious, and Agatha thought Thirlwell
was like his packers, in a way. He was not melancholy,