"George wasn't effusive; he was the kind of man you like better the longer you know him. If I were told that he ever did a mean thing, I wouldn't believe it. His last action--sending the others on--was characteristic." "They didn't want to go," Lisle interposed quietly. His companion nodded. "I believe that's true. I like to think so." There was something curious in his tone, which Lisle noticed. "From the beginning," Nasmyth went on, "George behaved very generously to Clarence." "It was Clarence that I meant to ask about more particularly." Nasmyth looked thoughtful, and when he answered, it struck Lisle that he was making an effort to give an unbiased opinion. "Clarence," he said, "is more likable when you first meet him than George used to be; a handsome man who knows how to say the right thing. Makes friends readily, but somehow he never keeps the best of them. He's one of the people who seem able to get whatever they want without having to struggle for it and who rarely land in any difficulty." Again a grudging note became apparent, as though the speaker were trying to subdue faint suspicion or disapproval, and Lisle changed the subject. "Had George Gladwyne any immediate relatives?" "One sister, as like him as it's possible for a woman to be. He wasn't greatly given to society; I don't think he'd ever have married. His death was a crushing blow to the girl--they were wonderfully attached to each other--but I've never seen a finer display of courage than hers when Clarence cabled the news." He broke off, as if he felt that he had been talking with too much freedom, and just then the report of a rifle came ringing across the water. "That's a duck's head shot off. Jake doesn't miss," he said. Lisle nodded. He could take a hint; and he had no doubt that Nasmyth was right regarding the shot, though it is not easy to decapitate a swimming duck with a rifle. He began to talk about the portage; and soon after Jake returned with a single duck they went to sleep. It was clear and bright the next morning and they spent the day carrying their loads a few miles up the hollow which pierced the height of the divide. Part of it was a morass, fissured with little creeks running down from the hills whose tops rose at no great elevation above the opening. This was bad to traverse, but it was worse when they came to a muskeg where dwarf forest had once covered what was now a swamp. Most of the trees had fallen as the soil, from some change in the lake's level, had grown too wet. They had partly rotted in the slough, and willows had afterward grown up among them.