He came back and selected young Adam, with a cousin of his—a taciturn youth, by name Jesse, son of Andrew—to be their boatman. Five or six of the young men were evidently eager to be chosen; but none disputed his choice. Rome, which reaches everywhere, reigned in the forest here; its old law of family unquestioned and absolute. The two youths swung off to pack and provision the canoe. An hour later they reported that all was ready; and by three in the afternoon the voyagers were on their way up-stream.
The voyage lasted four days and was seldom laborious; for the river ran in long loops through the table-land, and with an easy current. But here and there shallow runs of rock made stairways for it from one level to another, and each of these miniature rapids compelled a portage; so that towards the end of the second day the young men had each a red shoulder spot chafed by the canoe's weight.
They camped by night close beside the murmuring water, ate their supper beside a fire of boughs, slept on piled leaves beneath a tent of canvas stretched over a long ridge-pole. The two young men had a separate and similar tent.
For two days the forest hemmed them in so closely that although frost had half-stripped the deciduous trees, the eye found few vistas save along the river ahead. On either hand was drawn a continuous curtain of mossed stems and boughs overlapping and interlacing their delicate twigs. Scarcely a bird sang within the curtain; scarcely a woodland sound broke in upon the monotonous plash of the paddles. Alder, birch, maple, pine, spruce, and hemlock—the woods were a lifeless tapestry. Ahead curved and stretched the waterway, rippled now and again by a musk-rat crossing, swimming with its nose and no more above water.
A little before noon on the third day they emerged from this forest upon a wide track of burnt land; and certain hills of which the blue summits had for some hours been visible above the tree-tops on their right, now took shape from the base up, behind thin clumps of birch, poplar, and spruce—all of them (but the spruce especially) ragged and stunted in growth. For the rest this burnt land resembled a neglected pasture, being carpeted for the most part with moss and blueberry. A mysterious blight lay over all, and appeared to extend to the foot of the hills.
All through the afternoon the chine of these hills closed the landscape; purpled at times by passing clouds, at times lit up by sun-rays that defined every bush and seam on the slopes. All through the afternoon the folded gullies between the slopes unwound themselves interminably, little by little, as the voyagers traced up the river, paddling almost due southward, along its loops and meanders.
But by nightfall they had turned the last spur of the range, and the next morning opened to them a vastly different landscape: an undulating country, wooded like a park, with hills indeed, but scattered ones to the south and west, and behind the hills the faint purple dome of a far-distant mountain, so faintly seen that at first Ruth mistook it for a cloud.
She could not tell afterwards—though she often asked herself the question—at what point the landscape struck her as being strangely familiar. Yet she was sure that the recognition came to her suddenly. Sir Oliver since the morning's start had been indisposed to talk. From time to time he drew out his map and consulted it. The M'Lauchlin lads, on the other hand, seemed to be restless. During the halt for the midday meal they drew aside together and Ruth heard them conversing in eager whispers.
Possibly this stirred some expectation in her, which passed into surmise, into certainty. Late in the afternoon she drew in the paddle she had been plying, laid it across the canoe, and called softly,—
"Oliver!"