mal." 292

THE HOUSE IN THE WATER

CHAPTER I

The Sound in the Night

UPON the moonlit stillness came suddenly a far-off, muffled, crashing
sound. Just once it came, then once again the stillness of the
wilderness night, the stillness of vast, untraversed solitude. The Boy
lifted his eyes and glanced across the thin reek of the camp-fire at
Jabe Smith, who sat smoking contemplatively. Answering the glance, the
woodsman muttered "old tree fallin'," and resumed his passive
contemplation of the sticks glowing keenly in the fire. The Boy, upon
whom, as soon as he entered the wilderness, the taciturnity of the
woodsfolk descended as a garment, said nothing, but scanned his
companion's gaunt face with a gravely incredulous smile.

So wide-spread and supreme was the silence that five seconds after
that single strange sound had died out it seemed, somehow, impossible
to believe it had ever been. The light gurgle of the shallow and
shrunken brook which ran past the open front of the travellers'
"lean-to" served only to measure the stillness. Both Jabe and the Boy,
since eating their dinner, had gradually forgotten to talk. As the
moon rose over the low, fir-crested hills they had sunk into reverie,
watching the camp-fire die down.

At last, with a sort of crisp whisper a stick, burnt through the
middle, fell apart, and a flicker of red flame leaped up. The woodsman
knocked out his pipe, rose slowly to his feet, stretched his gaunt
length, and murmured, "Reckon we might as well turn in."

"That's all right for you, Jabe," answered the Boy, rising also,
tightening his belt, and reaching for his rifle, "but I'm going off to
see what I can see. Night's the time to see things in the woods."

Jabe grunted non-committally, and began spreading his blanket in the
lean-to. "Don't forgit to come back for breakfast, that's all," he
muttered. He regarded the Boy as a phenomenally brilliant hunter and
trapper spoiled by sentimental notions.

To the Boy, whose interest in all pertaining to woodcraft was much
broader and more sympathetic than that of his companion, Jabe's
interpretation of the sound of the falling tree had seemed hasty and
shallow. He knew that there was no better all-round woodsman in these
countries than Jabe Smith; but he knew also that Jabe's interest in
the craft was limited pretty strictly to his activities as hunter,
trapper and lumberman. Just now he was all lum