Agatha was glad that Thirlwell did not talk and thought he knew she wanted to be quiet.  This was a day she set apart from other days when it came round, for it was in the evening her father’s canoe capsized.  Since they drifted out on the Shadow, she had followed the track of his last voyage, and wondered with poignant tenderness what he had thought and felt.  Somehow she did not believe he had come back embittered by disappointment, and it was perhaps strange that she did not feel sad.  Indeed, she felt nothing of the shrinking she had feared.  Although her eyes filled now and then, her mood was calm, and sorrow had yielded to a gentle melancholy.

In the meantime, the current swept them on, past rippling eddies and rings of foam about half-covered rocks, and presently a gray trail of smoke stretched far along the bank.  Thirlwell said the woods were burning; they often burned in summer, though nobody knew how the fires were lighted.  By degrees the trees got dimmer, but the water shone with a pale gleam and presently the moon came out between drifting clouds.  Then as they swept round a bend a throbbing Agatha had heard for some time got suddenly loud and she glanced at Thirlwell.

“The Grand Rapid,” he said.  “The water’s very low; it’s quite safe.”

Agatha knew he did not think she was afraid; he had tactfully pretended to misunderstand her glance, and she fixed her eyes ahead.  The shadows were deeper and the forest was indistinct, but it was not dark.  Besides, the moon was getting bright and threw a glittering beam across the river.  She could see for some distance and not far in front the water was furrowed and marked by lines of foam.  The stream ran very fast and the throbbing swelled into a deep, sullen roar.  There was a smell of burning, and now and then a trail of smoke drifted out from the bank, beyond which a red glow glimmered against the sky.  It was like this, she thought, on that other evening when her father returned from his last journey, but the melancholy she had felt had given way to a strange emotional excitement.  Somehow she knew the pilgrimage she had made for his sake would end as she had hoped.

For all that, she set her lips and grasped the side of the canoe when they came to the top of the rapid.  Spray that looked like steam rolled across the water, blurring the tops of the crested waves that ran back as far as one could see, and here and there in the smooth black patches a wedge of foam boiled behind a rock.  Outside the furious mid-stream rush of the current, dark eddies revolved in angry circles and their backwash weltered along the bank.  Thirlwell seemed to be steering for this belt and Agatha thought he meant to run down through the slack.  As they swerved towards the rocks she looked round sharply, for there was a shout from the canoe astern—­

“Voici qui ven!”

An indistinct figure scrambled along the rough bank, turning and twisting among the driftwood and boulders.  For the most part, the bank was in shadow, but in places where the trees were not so thick the moonlight pierced the gloom.