The sun sank from sight. Darkness and a sudden chill overtook them. Turning, they marched down the hill in silence.
Several nights later, with only a shelter of poles covered by boughs, Johnny slept again in his blankets before the fire. His was the sleep of one whose burdens are heavy, whose trails have been long, but whose heart is light.
“The canoe is fit,” was the last word of Gordon Duncan before they went to rest. “Fit as a fiddle. To-morrow the river takes us on the way.”
“But remember,” said his granddaughter, “that there are rapids in the river.”
“There are never rapids in any life till we reach them,” said the rugged old Scot. “And when we do reach them we can but do our part. God will see that all is for the best.”
CHAPTER VIII
A HAVEN OF REFUGE
“It is going to storm.” The old Scot dropped his paddle to the bottom of the dugout long enough to turn up the collar of his jacket, then he took up the mechanical swing of his brawny arms that had done so much in the days that had just passed to speed the three adventurers on into the Northland.
“Going to be a bad one!” Johnny threw a fleeting glance at the girl before him. Like her grandfather, she performed wonders. She had kept up the steady, monotonous swing of paddle until Johnny thought she must be working in her sleep. The muscles of her arms had grown hard as a man’s.
They had found the Corporal’s cottonwood dugout a good one. For three days it had carried them straight on into the great unknown.
“After all, she’s only a girl,” he told himself, thinking once more of the girl. “This storm will be a bad one. Wish we’d come to shelter. The map shows a cabin or something down here somewhere. Be easy enough to pass it in the storm. Map don’t show which bank. Wish—”