sunset light, gurgled about her sides, and trailed away astern in two
divergent lines as the paddles flashed and fell. There was a thud as the
blades struck the water, and the long, light hull forged onward with
slightly lifted, bird's-head prow, while the two men swung forward for
the next stroke with a rhythmic grace of motion. They knelt, facing
forward, in the bottom of the craft, and, dissimilar as they were in
features and, to some extent, in character, the likeness between them was
stronger than the difference. Both bore the unmistakable stamp of a
wholesome life spent in vigorous labor in the open. Their eyes were clear
and, like those of most bushmen, singularly steady; their skin was clean
and weather-darkened; and they were leanly muscular.

On either side of the lane of green water giant firs, cedars and balsams
crept down the rocky hills to the whitened driftwood fringe. They formed
part of the great coniferous forest which rolls west from the wet Coast
Range of Canada's Pacific Province and, overleaping the straits, spreads
across the rugged and beautiful wilderness of Vancouver Island. Ahead,
clusters of little frame houses showed up here and there in openings
among the trees, and a small sloop, toward which the canoe was heading,
lay anchored near the wharf.

The men had plied the paddle during most of that day, from inclination
rather than necessity, for they could have hired Siwash Indians to
undertake the labor for them, had they been so minded. They were,
though their appearance did not suggest it, moderately prosperous; but
their prosperity was of recent date; they had been accustomed to doing
everything for themselves, as are most of the men who dwell among the
woods and ranges of British Columbia.

Vane, who knelt nearest the bow, was twenty-seven years of age. Nine of