ould not break this strange stillness. They
spoke hastily, and relapsed to silence, like the rare necessary voices
in a room where one lies dead. The hush, calm and primal, with the
infinity of the wilderness as its only measure of time, took no account
of the shock of a second's interruption. Two loons swam like ghosts.
Everywhere and nowhere among the trees, in the hills, over the water,
the finer senses were almost uneasily conscious of a vast and awful
presence. It was as yet aloof, unheeding, buddhistic, brooding in
nirvanic calm, still unawakened to put forth the might of its
displeasure. Under its dreaming eyes men might, fearfully and with
reverence, carry on their affairs,--fearfully and with reverence,
catching the breath, speaking low, growing silent and stern in the
presence of the North.

At the little camp under the cedars, Dick Herron and Sam Bolton,
assisted by the Ojibway girl, May-may-gwan, cut the moose-meat into thin
strips, salted, and dried it in the bright sun. And since the presence
of loons argued fish, they set their nets and lines. Several days thus
passed.

In their relations the three promptly settled back into a species of
routine. Men who travel in the Silent Places speedily take on the colour
of their surroundings. They become silent also. A band of voyageurs of
sufficient strength may chatter and sing; they have by the very force of
numbers created an atmosphere of their own. But two are not enough for
this. They have little to say, for their souls are laved by the great
natural forces.

Dick Herron, even in ordinary circumstances, withdrew rather grimly into
himself. He looked out at things from beneath knit brows; he held his
elbows close to his sides, his fists clenched, his whole spiritual being
self-contained and apart, watchful for enmity in what he felt but could
not understand. But to this, his normal habit, now was added a
sullenness almost equally instinctive. In some way he felt himself
aggrieved by the girl's presence. At first it was merely the natural
revolt of a very young man against assuming responsibility he had not
invited. The resulting discomfort of mind, however, he speedily assigned
to the girl's account. He continued, as at first, to ignore her. But in
the slow rumination of the forest he became more and more irritably
sensible of her presence. Sam's taciturnity was contrastedly sunny and
open. He looked on things about him with the placid receptivity of an
ol