“There are few who know of this break into the forest,” said Jean in a low voice.  “Listen, M’sieur!”

From out of the gloom ahead of them there came a faint, oily splashing.

“Otter,” whispered Jean.  “The stream is like this for many miles, and it is full of life that you can never see because of the darkness.”

Something in the stillness and the gloom held them silent.  The canoes slipped along like shadows, and sometimes they bent their heads to escape the low-hanging boughs.  Josephine’s face shone whitely in the dusk.  She was alert and listening.  When she spoke it was in a voice strangely subdued.

“I love this stream,” she whispered.  “It is full of life.  On all sides of us, in the forest, there is life.  The Indians do not come here, because they have a superstitious dread of this eternal gloom and quiet.  They call it the Spirit Stream.  Even Jean is a little oppressed by it.  See how closely he keeps to us.  I love it, because I love everything that is wild.  Listen!  Did you hear that?”

“Mooswa,” spoke Jean out of the gloom close to them.

“Yes, a moose,” she said.  “Here is where I saw my first moose, so many years ago that it is time for me to forget,” she laughed softly.  “I think I had just passed my fourth birthday.”

“You were four on the day we started, ma Josephine,” came Jean’s voice as his canoe shot slowly ahead where the stream narrowed; and then his voice came back more faintly:  “that was sixteen years ago to-day.”

A shot breaking the dead stillness of the sunless world about him could not have sent the blood rushing through Philip’s veins more swiftly than Jean’s last words.  For a moment he stopped his paddling and leaned forward so that he could look close into Josephine’s face.

“This is your birthday?”

“Yes.  You ate my birthday cake.”

She heard the strange, happy catch in his breath as he straightened back and resumed his work.  Mile after mile they wound their way through the mysterious, subterranean-like stream, speaking seldom, and listening intently for the breaks in the deathlike stillness that spoke of life.  Now and then they caught the ghostly flutter of owls in the gloom, like floating spirits; back in the forest saplings snapped and brush crashed underfoot as caribou or moose caught the man-scent; they heard once the panting, sniffing inquiry of a bear close at hand, and Philip reached forward for his rifle.  For an instant Josephine’s hand fluttered to his own, and held it back, and the dark glow of her eyes said:  “Don’t kill.”  Here there were no big-eyed moose-birds, none of the mellow throat sounds of the brush sparrow, no harsh janglings of the gaudily coloured jays.  In the timber fell the soft footpads of creatures with claw and fang, marauders and outlaws of darkness.  Light, sunshine, everything that loved the openness of day were beyond.  For more than an hour they had driven their canoes steadily on, when, as suddenly as they had entered it, they slipped out from the cavernous gloom into the sunlight again.