It was a problem to tax the ingenuity of any housekeeper,--to prepare an appetizing breakfast out of such limited supplies. But in this art, particularly, the forest girls are trained. A quantity of rice had been left from the stew of the preceding night, and mixing it with flour and water and salt, she made a batter. Sooner or later fresh fat could be obtained from game to use in frying: to-day she saw no course other than to melt a piece of candle. The reverberating roar of the rifle a hundred yards down the river bank, however, suggested another alternative. A moment later Ben appeared--and the breakfast problem was solved. It was another of the woods people that his rifle had brought down,--one that wore fur rather than feathers and which had just come in from night explorations along the river bank. It was a yearling black bear--really no larger than a cub--and he had an inch of fat under his furry hide. The fat he yielded was not greatly different from lard; and the pancakes--or fritters, as Ben termed them--were soon frying merrily. Served with hot tea they constituted a filling and satisfactory breakfast for both travelers. After breakfast they took to the river, yielding themselves once more to the whims of the current. Once more the steep banks whipped past them in ever-changing vista; and Ben had to strain at his paddle to guide the craft between the perilous crags. The previous day the high waters had carried them safely above the boulders of the river bed: to-day some of the larger crags all but scraped the bottom of the canoe. It did not tend toward peace of mind to know that any instant they might encounter a submerged crag that would rip their craft in twain. Ben felt a growing eagerness to land. But within an hour they came out once more upon the open forest. The river broadened, sped less swiftly, the bank sloped gradually to the distant hills. This was the heart of Back There,--a virgin and primeval forest unchanged since the piling-up of the untrodden ranges. The wild pace of the craft was checked, and they kept watch for a suitable place to land. There was no need to push on through the seething cataracts that lay still farther below. Shortly before the noon hour Ben's quick eye saw a break in the heavy brushwood that lined the bank and quickly paddled toward it. In a moment it was revealed as the mouth, of a small, clear stream, flowing out of a beaver meadow where the grass was rank and high. In a moment more he pushed the canoe into the mud of the creek bank. They both got out, rather sober of mien, and she helped him haul the canoe out upon the bank. They unloaded it quickly, carrying the supplies in easy loads fifty yards up into the edge of the forest, on well-drained dry ground.