They kept it up for several hours, and then, toward evening, the rain ceased and the clouds rolled aside. A wonderful yellow light shone behind the bordering hills, and the twisted, wind-battered cedars on their crests stood out against it in hard, fretted tracery. The wind dropped; the short, white waves smoothed down; the water, heaving gently, gleamed with a coppery glare, and the paddle blades seemed to splash up liquid fire. Then the shores closed in ahead, and, landing on a shingle beach, they made camp in the mouth of a gap among the hills. Supper was prepared and eaten, and afterward Jake took up his rifle. "I saw some ducks in the next bay," he explained. He strolled out of camp, and Nasmyth smiled at Lisle. "Except when he advised you to pole, that's about all he has said to-day." This was correct. The packer was a taciturn inhabitant of the wilds who seldom indulged in an unnecessary remark. There was, however, no moroseness about him; the man was good-humored in his quiet way, and his usual ruminative calm was no deterrent from apparently tireless action. For the most part, he lived alone in the impressive stillness of the bush, where he had a few acres of partly cleared land which failed to provide him with a living. For that reason, he periodically left his tiny log house and packed for some survey expedition, or went down to work for a few months at a sawmill. Capable of most determined labor, wonderfully proficient with his hands, he asked no more from life than a little plain food and indifferent shelter. No luxury that civilization could offer would have tempted him to desert the wilds. Lisle filled his pipe with leisurely content. He shared Jake's love for the wilderness, and he found it strangely pleasant to rest in camp after a day's persistent toil. Besides, he usually enjoyed his evening chat with Nasmyth, for, widely different as their training and mode of life had been, they had much in common. Then, too, there was something in the prospect spread out before them that impelled tranquillity. The clump of wet cedars among which they had camped distilled a clean, aromatic smell; and there was a freshness in the cool evening air that reinvigorated their tired bodies. Above the low hilltops the sky glimmered with saffron and transcendental green, and half the lake shone in ethereal splendor; the other half was dim and bordered with the sharply-cut shadows of the trees. Except for the lap of water upon the pebbles and the wild cry of a loon that rang like a peal of unearthly laughter out of a darkening bay, there was nothing to break the deep stillness of the waste. Lisle pointed to the gap in the hills, which was filling with thin white mist. "That's the last big portage the Gladwynes made," he remarked. "They came in by a creek to the west, and they were badly played out when they struck this divide; the struggle to get through broke them up." He paused before he added: "What kind of men were they?"