on into the angles of the
shelter, discovering Dick, asleep in heavy exhaustion, his right forearm
across his eyes. The girl stole a glance at Sam Bolton. Apparently he
was busy with the fire. She reached out to touch the young man's
blanket.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dick was afoot after a few hours' sleep. He aroused Sam and went about
the preparation of breakfast. May-may-gwan attempted to help, but both
she and her efforts were disregarded. She brought wood, but Dick rustled
a supply just the same, paying no attention to the girl's little pile;
she put on fresh fuel, but Dick, without impatience,--indeed, as though
he were merely rearranging the fire,--contrived to undo her work; she
brought to hand the utensils, but Dick, in searching for them, always
looked where they had originally been placed. His object seemed not so
much to thwart the girl as to ignore her. When breakfast was ready he
divided it into two portions, one of which he ate. After the meal he
washed the few dishes. Once he took a cup from the girl's hand as she
was drying it, much as he would have taken it from the top of a stump.
He then proceeded to clean it as though it had just been used.

May-may-gwan made no sign that she noticed these things. After a little
she helped Sam roll the blankets, strike the shelter, construct the
packs. Here her assistance was accepted, though Sam did not address her.
After a few moments the start was made.

The first few hours were spent as before, wading the stream. As she
could do nothing in the water, May-may-gwan kept to the woods, walking
stolidly onward, her face to the front, expressionless, hiding whatever
pain she may have felt. This side of noon, however, the travellers came
to a cataract falling over a fifty-foot ledge into a long,
cliff-bordered pool.

It became necessary to portage. The hill pinched down steep and close.
There existed no trails. Dick took the little camp axe to find a way. He
clambered up one after the other three ravines--grown with brush and
heavy ferns, damp with a trickle of water,--always to be stopped near
the summit by a blank wall impossible to scale. At length he found a
passage he thought might be practicable. Thereupon he cut a canoe trail
back to the water-side.

In clearing this trail his attention turned to making room for a canoe
on a man's back. Therefore the footing he bothered with not at all.
Saplings he clipped down by bending them with the left hand, and
str