The days succeeded one another.  The camps by the rivers or in the woods were in essential all alike.  The shelter, the shape, and size of the tiny clearing, the fire, the cooking utensils scattered about, the little articles of personal belonging were the same.  Only certain details of surrounding differed, and they were not of importance,—­birch-trees for poplars, cedar for both, a river bend to the northwest instead of the southwest, still water for swift, a low bank for a high; but always trees, water, bank, and the sky brilliant with stars.  After a little the day’s progress became a myth, to be accepted only by the exercise of faith.  The forest was a great treadmill in which men toiled all day, only to be surrounded at night by the same grandeurs and littlenesses they had that morning left.  In the face of this apparent futility time blew vast.  Years were as nothing measured by the task of breaking through the enchanted web that enmeshed them.

And yet all knew by experience, though no one of them could rise to a realisation of the fact, that some day their canoe would round the bend and they would find themselves somewhere.  Then they could say to themselves that they had arrived, and could tell themselves that between here and their starting-point lay so many hundred miles.  Yet in their secret hearts they would not believe it.  They would know that in reality it lay but just around the corner.  Only between were dream-days of the shifting forest heavy with toil.

This is the enchantment the North lays on her children, so that when the toil oppresses them and death seems to win, they may not care greatly to struggle, knowing that the struggle is vain.

In the country of the Kabinikagam they visited thus many hunting districts.  The travel neither hastened nor lagged.  From time to time it was necessary to kill, and then the meat must be cared for.  Berries and wild rice were to be gathered.  July drew near its end.

Sam Bolton, knowing now the men with whom he had to deal, found no difficulty in the exercise of his simple diplomacy.  The Ojibway defaulter was not to be heard of, but every nook searched without result narrowed the remaining possibilities.  Everything went well enough until late one afternoon.

The portage happened to lead above a narrow gorge over a rapids.  To accomplish it the travellers had first to scale a steep little hill, then to skirt a huge rounded rock that overhung the gorge.  The roughness of the surface and the adhesive power of their moccasins alone held them to the slant.  These were well sufficient.  Unfortunately, however, Dick, without noticing it, had stepped into a little pool of water on disembarking.  Buckskin while dry is very adhesive; when wet very slippery.  As he followed Sam out on the curving cheek of the rock his foot slid, he lost his equilibrium, was on the edge of falling, overbalanced by the top-heavy pack he was carrying.  Luckily Sam himself was