A boat moved on Bow Creek, and in it there sat two men and a young woman. One man rowed while his wife and the other man watched him. He pulled a long, powerful stroke, and the little vessel slipped up the estuary on a tide that was at flood, pondering a moment before the turn. The banks were a blaze of autumn colour, beneath which shelving planes of stone sank down to the water. The woman twirled an umbrella to dry it from the recent storm. She was cold and shivered a little, for though the sun shone again, the north wind blew. “I’m fearing we oughtn’t to have come, Medora,” said the man who sat beside her. “Take my coat,” advised Medora’s husband. “It’s dry enough inside.” He stopped rowing, took off his coat and handed it to his wife, who slipped it over her white blouse, but did not thank him. Medora Dingle was a dark-faced girl, with black hair and a pair of deep, brown eyes—lovely, but restless—under clean, arched eye-brows. Her mouth was red and small, her face fresh and rosy. She seemed self-conscious, and shivered a little more than was natural; for she was strong and hearty enough in body, tall and lithe, one who laboured six days a week and had never known sickness. Two of her fingers were tied up in cotton rags, and one of the wounds was on her ring finger so that her wedding ring was not visible. Presently Edward Dingle put down the oars. “Now you can take it on, old chap,” he said, and then changed places with his companion. The men were very unlike, but each comely after his fashion. Dingle was the bigger—a broad-shouldered, loose-limbed youth of five-and-twenty, with a head rather small for his bulk, and a pleasant laughter-loving expression. He was fair and pretty rather than handsome. His features were regular, his eyes blue, his hair straw-coloured and curly. A small moustache did not conceal his good-humoured mouth. His voice was high-pitched, and he chattered a great deal of nothing. He was a type of the slight, kindly man taken for granted—a man whose worth is under-valued by reason of his unimportance to himself. He had a boundless good nature combined with a modest mind. Jordan Kellock stood an inch or two shorter than Dingle and was a year or two older. He shaved clean, and brushed his dark, lustreless hair off his high forehead without parting it. Of a somewhat sallow complexion, with grey, deliberate eyes and a clean-cut, thin-lipped mouth, his brow suggested idealism and enthusiasm; there was a light in his solemn eyes and a touch of the sensitive about his nose. He spoke slowly, with a level, monotonous accent, and in this also offered an abrupt contrast to his companion. It seemed that he felt the reality of life and was pervious to impressions. He rowed with less mannerism, and a slower stroke than his friend; but the boat moved faster than it had with Dingle at the oars, for Kellock was a very strong man, and his daily work had developed his breast and arms abnormally.