The moon rose large, very large indeed, and very yellow.  There was smoke of distant forest fires in the dry hot air, which turned the moon as golden as a pane of amber glass.  There was no fear of fire in the forest through which the boat was passing other than that cold pretence of yellow flames, the broken reflections of the moon on the wet mirror in which the trees were growing.  These trees would not burn; they had been drowned long ago!  They stood up now like corpses or ghosts, rising from the deathly flood, lifeless and smooth; ghastly, in that they retained the naked shape that they had had when alive.  To the east the reflection of the moon was seen for a mile or more under their grey outstretched branches, and on all sides its light penetrated, showing through what a strange dead wilderness the one small fragile boat was travelling.

Very little of the feeling of the place entered the mind of the girl who was working at her oars with such strong, swift strokes.  Every day through the ten or fifteen miles of the dead forest a little snorting steamboat passed, bearing market produce and passengers.  The smoke of its funnel had blasted all sense of the weird picturesqueness of the place in the minds of the inhabitants, that is, they were accustomed to it, and sentiment in most hearts is slowly killed by use and wont, as this forest had been killed by the encroaching water.  Ann Markham’s was not a mind which harboured very much sentiment at that period of her life; it was a keen, quick-witted, practical mind.  She was not afraid of the solitude of the night, or of the strange shapes and lights and shadows about her.  Now that she knew for certain that she was alone and unpursued, she was for the time quite satisfied.

A mile more down the windings of the lake, and Ann began counting the trees between certain landmarks.  Then into an opening between the trees which could not have been observed by a casual glance she steered her boat, and worked it on into a little open passage-way among their trunks.  The way widened as she followed it, and then closed again.  Where the passage ended, one great tree had fallen, and its trunk with upturned branches was lying, wedged between two standing trunks, in an almost horizontal position.  On it a man was sitting, a wild, miserable figure of a man, who looked as if he might have been some savage being who was at home there, but who spoke in a language too vicious and profane for any savage.

He leaned out from his branch as far as he dared, and welcomed the girl with curses because she had not come sooner, because it was now the small hours of the night and he had expected her in the evening.

“Be quiet, father,” said the girl; “what’s the use of talking like that!” Then she held the boat under the tree and helped him to slip down into it, where, in spite of his rage, he stretched his legs with an evident animal satisfaction.  He wallowed in the straitened liberty that the boat gave, lying down in the bottom and gently kicking out his cramped limbs, while the girl held tight to the trees, steadying the boat with her feet.