gullies where alders hung
over, and an ever-rustling aspen spread the shadow of its boughs across
the water. The light-coloured mud, formed of disintegrated chalk, on the
farther and shallower side was only partly hidden by flags and sedges,
which like a richer and more alluvial earth. Nor did the bushes grow
very densely on this soil over the chalk, so that there was more room
for casting the fly than is usually the case where a stream runs through
a forest. Oliver, after getting his tackle in order, at once began to
cast, while Felix, hanging his doublet on an oft-used branch, and
leaning his spear against a tree, took his chisels and gouge from the
flag basket.

He had chosen the black poplar for the canoe because it was the lightest
wood, and would float best. To fell so large a tree had been a great
labour, for the axes were of poor quality, cut badly, and often required
sharpening. He could easily have ordered half-a-dozen men to throw the
tree, and they would have obeyed immediately; but then the individuality
and interest of the work would have been lost. Unless he did it himself
its importance and value to him would have been diminished. It had now
been down some weeks, had been hewn into outward shape, and the larger
part of the interior slowly dug away with chisel and gouge.

He had commenced while the hawthorn was just putting forth its first
spray, when the thickets and the trees were yet bare. Now the May bloom
scented the air, the forest was green, and his work approached
completion. There remained, indeed, but some final shaping and rounding
off, and the construction, or rather cutting out, of a secret locker in
the stern. This locker was nothing more than a square aperture chiselled
out like a mortice, entering not from above but parallel with the
bottom, and was to be closed with a tight-fitting piece of wood driven
in by force of mallet.

A little paint would then conceal the slight chinks, and the boat might
be examined in every possible way without any trace of this hiding-place
being observed. The canoe was some eleven feet long, and nearly three
feet in the beam; it tapered at either end, so that it might be
propelled backwards or forwards without turning, and stem and stern
(interchangeable definitions in this case) each rose a few inches higher
than the general gunwale. The sides were about two inches thick, the
bottom three, so that although dug out from light wood the canoe was
rather heav