"If it reached so far in safety it would shoot likewise."
"You think it possible that the canoe might pass the gully unharmed?" Bob then questioned. It was always his nature to struggle for the brightest view, and the man's answer was somewhat in the same spirit.
"It's no' the way o' Skipper Mackintosh to find trouble until trouble finds him. He's been in a' the back corners o' Europe, Africa, India, China, and America; and, if he learned nothing mair from his travels, he learned this: troubles are easier conquered when you meet them wi' a firm lip at the proper time. But the man that moans before he kens what he's moaning about—well, it's little strength he's got left when the fight really begins."
"Yet if, as you say, the Athabasca is so dangerous——" began Alf, when he was again interrupted with kindly roughness.
"If? Laddie, laddie, are you forgetting that there's a Hand that could guide the frailest birch-bark safely through Niagara itsel'? And I doot not that I'm right when I say that it's my opeenion that that same Hand has no' been very far from your faithers in their plight. Does either o' you ken anything o' this by chance?"
As he spoke Mackintosh dived his hand into the hip-pocket of his overalls and produced a white handkerchief which he spread out upon the ground by the fire. The boys bent forward, and immediately Alf exclaimed—
"That's my father's! See! His initials are at the corner. Where did you find it?"
"Not in the Athabasca!" said Mackintosh with quiet triumph. "Haggis and I came upon it this morning a hundred yards from Silver Lake."
"Then that means that they are on shore!" exclaimed Bob with delight at the relief from one anxiety that the evidence of the handkerchief provided.
"Ay. The Athabasca is free from that charge, at any rate. That hanky has no legs to walk by itsel'. It must have been carried. By whom? No' by an Indian, though I ken there's been Indians in the viceenity. If a redskin had found it, he'd have taken better care o' it. And so it's clear to me that one o' your faithers must have dropped it on dry land, and so—so—— Well, you both o' you can have a sound night's rest."