"Aye, I have many a time."
"I'm afraid we have seen the last of Mr. Dick."
"If he wasn't killed outright he must have been battered to pieces in the Rough Water, for I don't think there is a man living that could go through the Rough Water without some support. I have taken a stick of timber through, but riding a stick of timber and going through with nothing but your own arms is a different case. I have seen sticks of timber that have drifted through and been gathered in at the mouth of the creek, and the way they have been gouged and splintered in contact with the rocks was a caution. No man could be beaten around that way and live."
There was a pause of some length, during which Hunter Tom forgot his cleansing of the rifle, and there was a moisture in his eye, a faint indication of the sad ness that he had within him, and all the while the mellow autumnal sunshine poured down and around them through the crimson foliage o'erhead, and the birds of the neighbouring woods seemed to sing merrily as if jesting, laughing, at the solemn import of the pilot's words. It was the pilot who broke the silence.
"Is Mr. Ande nigh well?" with a nod at the slumbering form on the bearskins.
"Still weak, although his wounds have healed. I believe he came off the worst of any of us in the battle. But he's getting stronger. He was much worried about Mr. Dick and the maps being lost."
"Maps lost?"
"Aye. He said that both maps were placed in the bottom of the canoe before we landed. They may have been dropped out when I hauled the canoe ashore and hid it among the underbrush when I returned. The doctor thinks, though, he will be able to be moved soon, and then we shall have a search for them." Tom mentioned the doctor with a tinge of sarcasm as if in contempt of doctors and their medicine. "The lad was getting on well enough under my care, but Professor Bill insisted on calling in the doctor, and so I handed over the case to him, though the lad would have done just as well, if not better, under my own care."
"Do ye think ye can find the mine again?"
"Aye, perhaps, and yet 'twill be a hard thing. I looked o'er the ground when the searching party was with me. The oak and the stream can be found easy enough, but the place of excavation I looked for in vain. The whole hill is covered with loose stones and debris and should we find it, I doubt whether it will prove much more than a small vein of sulphide of lead. I might possibly find it again, for my memory is good, but I have sickened of the whole affair. What use is it to me?" There was a tinge of bitterness in the old man's tones.