How was he to bear himself at the meeting of this divided
couple? He could not avoid being a witness of it. He must hand her over
with a smile, he supposed, and make a graceful get-away. But suppose he
were prevented from leaving immediately. Or suppose, as was quite
likely, that they wished to return with him! He ground his teeth at the
thought of such an ordeal. Would he be able to carry it off? He must!

"What's the matter?" Clare asked suddenly. She had been studying his
face.

"Why did you ask?"

"You looked as if you had a sudden pain."

"I had," he said, with a rueful smile. "My knees. It's so long since I
paddled that they're not limbered up yet."

She appeared not altogether satisfied with this explanation.

This part of the river showed a succession of long smooth reaches with
low banks of a uniform height bordered with picturesque ragged
jack-pines, tall, thin, and sharply pointed. Here and there, where the
composition seemed to require it, a perfect island was planted in the
brown flood. At the foot of the pines along the edge of each bank grew
rows of berry bushes as regularly as if set out by a gardener. Already
the water was receding as a result of the summer drouth, but, as fast as
it fell, the muddy beach left at the foot of each bank was mantled with
the tender green of goose-grass, a diminutive cousin of the tropical
bamboo. Mile after mile the character of the stream showed no variance.
It was like a noble corridor through the pines.

At intervals during the day they met a few Kakisas, singly or in pairs,
in their beautifully-made little birch-bark canoes. These individuals,
when they came upon them suddenly, almost capsized in their astonishment
at beholding pale-faces on their river. No doubt, in the tepees behind
the willows, the coming of the whites had long been foretold as a
portent of dreadful things.

They displayed their feelings according to their various natures. The
first they met, a solitary youth, was frankly terrified. He hastened
ashore, the water fairly cascading from his paddle, and, squatting
behind the bushes, peered through at them like an animal. The next pair
stood their ground, clinging to an overhanging willow--too startled to
escape perhaps--where they stared with goggling eyes, and visibly
trembled. It gave Stonor and Clare a queer sense of power thus to have
their mere appearance create so great an excitement. Nothing could be
got out of these two; they would not