The voices rang clear a moment, and then were lost, and heard anew, without seeming cause for the break. Then came a fresh snatch of song:
“Come o’er the stream, Charlie,
Braw Charlie, brave Charlie ;
Come o’er the stream, Charlie,
And dine with McClain.”

As she listened and caught the wilder notes of Burnieboozle, they fell into the orchestral oppositions of the rapids, and died to the car amid the cry and crash and hoarse noises of the broken waters.

Rose saw the men rise and take their poles, and felt amidst the beautiful dim vision of white wave-crests how the frail canoe quivered as it was driven up the watery way.

Then they kept to the shore under the trees, the poles monotonously ringing, with ever around her, coming and going, that delicious odor of the spruce, richest after rain, which to smell in the winter, amid the roar of the city, brings to the wood-farer the homesickness of the distant forest. Her dreamy mood once broken was again disturbed by that rare speaker, the silent Polycarp.

11“I smell camp.”

“What!” she said.

“Yes—very good smell—when bacon fry—smell him long away—two mile .”

“I smell it,” she said. “How strange!”

“Smell fry long way—smell baccy not so far. Smell Mr. Lyndsay pipe little while back.”

And now far ahead she saw lights, and started as the Indian smote the water with the flat of his paddle, making a loud sound, which came back in altered notes from the hills about them.

“Make ’em hear at camp.”

Presently she was at the foot of a little cliff, where the twins were already noisily busy.

“Halloa, Rose! Can you see?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“Isn’t it jolly? Give me a hand.”

“No, me.”

“This beats Columbus,” said the elder lad. “Take care, Spices”—this to the younger twin, who, by reason of many freckles, was known in the household, to his disgust, as the Cinnamon Bear, Cinnamon, Spices, or Bruin, as caprice dictated.

“I’ll punch your red head, Rufus,” cried the lad. “You just wait, Ruby .”

“Boys! boys!” said Rose. “Now each of you give me a hand. Don’t begin with a quarrel.”

“It isn’t a quarrel; it’s a row,” said Jack.

“A distinction not without a difference,” laughed Rose. “Oh, here is everybody.” And with jest and laughter they climbed the steps cut in the cliff, and gaily entered the cabin which was to be their home for some weeks.