The heat and the silence together seemed to exert a depressing effect on them, and when they spoke they found themselves quite unconsciously talking in lowered voices. It was a relief when, chugging around a bend, they came on an aged negro in the stern of a punt, half asleep, while two corks lay placidly on the surface near by. He awoke sufficiently to wave and bow to them and to shake his head when Pud asked if he was having any luck. When they went from sight around the next curve, his chin was back on his chest once more. The river turned and twisted continually, but the turns were leisurely and there was deep water right to within a few feet of the tree-hung banks. Now and then a snag sent them farther into the middle, but on the whole navigation was easy and Pud might almost have emulated the old darky and dozed at his post. Turtles slipped noiselessly from half-submerged logs and now and then a fish broke the smooth surface. An occasional kingfisher awoke the silence with strident challenge and jays called mockingly from the woods. Once they passed a mother duck herding four youngsters before her to safety, and Harmon’s eyes grew very round and hungry-looking. It was now time to think of disembarking and setting up camp, and Pud watched anxiously for a clearing, but the trees continued on each side, so closely set, so tangled in undergrowth as to afford no chance for the tent. Tim showed indications of mutiny and suggested dining on board and finding a camp-site later, but just then a new turn of the stream promised better things. On the left the forest gave place to a clearing that ran back, fan-shaped, to the summit of a distant slope. At some time, not very recently it seemed, the timber had been cut, and everywhere within the bare expanse unsightly stumps and unburned mounds of slashings remained. Over the water hung a decrepit wharf, too high at the present stage of the river to offer convenient landing. Well beyond the wharf, drawn to the edge of the red-clay bank and moored to a near-by stump, lay a shanty-boat. This was the first of its kind they had encountered, although farther up the river they found them numerous enough. The present one was small, with a four-foot roofed deck at the shoreward end from which a plank led upward to the bank. It was painted green, but the color had faded to a neutral tint. There were small one-sash windows on the sides and end. That the shanty-boat was in use was proved by two things; smoke issuing from the stovepipe thrust through the roof and a person sitting on an upturned nail-keg on the deck. At first the person appeared to be a boy, but a closer look showed her to be a girl in a bluish dress. ‘I guess,’ said Pud, ‘we can camp beyond ’em, but maybe we’d better ask.’