went on, came to a curve, rounded it in an easy, sauntering but skillful
fashion, and entered a straight reach of the stream.

So far the canoe was having a lone and untroubled journey. The river
widening now and flowing between descending banks was wholly its own,
but clinging to the habit it had formed when it started it still hung to
the western bank. The night grew more and more favorable to the
undiscovered voyage it wished to make. Masses of clouds gathered and
hovered over that particular river, as if they had some especial object
in doing so, and they made the night so dark that the red eyes of the
canoe, great in size though they were, could see but a little way down
the stream. Yet it kept on boldly and there was a purpose in its course.
Often it seemed to be on the point of recklessly running against the
rocky shore, but always it sheered off in time, and though its advance
was apparently casual it was moving down the stream at a great rate.

The canoe had gone fully four hundred yards when an Abenaki warrior on
the far side of the river caught a glimpse of a shadow moving in the
shadow of the bank, and a sustained gaze soon showed to him that it was
a canoe, and, in his opinion, a derelict, washed by the flood from some
camp a long distance up the stream. He watched it for a little while,
and was then confirmed in his opinion by its motion as it floated lazily
with the current.

The darkness was not too great to keep the Abenaki from seeing that it
was a good canoe, a fine shell of Iroquois make, and canoes were
valuable. He had not been able to secure any scalp, which was a sad
disappointment, and now Manitou had sent this stray craft to him as a
consolation prize. He was not one to decline the gifts of the gods, and
he ran along the edge of the cliff until he came to a low point well