The next day Haskins informed Geary of his intention to remain in Denleigh for another week, and the negro expressed his delight at the decision. Adonis was a cheerful soul, who had traveled widely, in the humble capacity of a steward on board various liners. He therefore approached more intellectual society than he could obtain in lethargic Denleigh. Haskins, with an eye to copy, after the fashion of the literary man, found Geary's experiences both entertaining and useful. As for the landlady, she was a nonentity, who worked like a horse, and was as dumb as one. She seemed to be somewhat afraid of her ever-smiling husband, and Gerald thought that there might be some cause for such dread. With all his suave manners, Geary's one eye hinted at sinister doings. But, as yet, Haskins, knowing him only on the surface, had no fault to find with his personality. There was some difficulty in finding a precisely suitable canoe in Exeter, but having made up his mind--a singularly obstinate one--Gerald never rested until he had attained his object. In a couple of days he returned to the Devon Maid with a light birchwood affair, which he had purchased from a returned Canadian emigrant. This the young man temporarily bestowed in an outside shed, and informed his landlord, casually, that he intended to explore the waters of the Ruddle, as the stream was called. The name evidently came from the streaky red banks between which it flowed. Geary advised his guest to travel downstream toward Silbury, as the canoe would there be impeded by fewer stones. Needless to say, as Leegarth was in precisely the opposite direction, Haskins had no intention of taking this well-meant advice. And, indeed, because of the very difficulty in navigating the upper reaches of the Ruddle, he had purchased the canoe, for he could carry so light a craft along the banks when stones and weeds blocked up the waterway. When Gerald took his Indian coracle down to the river, next afternoon, he saw how wise he had been in not buying a heavier boat. As the little stream wound its devious way through the dense woods it grew yet more narrow, and, on the whole, somewhat shallow. Here and there deep pools were to be found, inshore, but as a rule the current flowed lightly over a shingly bed, foaming round gigantic stones or bubbling over the trunks of fallen trees. The distance to Leegarth, as the crow flies, could not have been more than three miles; but the stream twisted so oddly, and the difficulties of navigation were so great, that Gerald sometimes doubted if he would reach his journey's end. Several times he was forced to climb the steep banks and drag his canoe through thickly growing saplings: but, on the whole, the tiny shallop behaved with the dexterity of an eel in slipping through dangerous places. Nevertheless his traveling was more like the exploration of unknown lands than like a civilized river trip in mapped-out England.