He led them to it, the small children bringing up the rear of the procession.  The Z’m—­Z’m of the saws grew loud in Ruth’s ears before crossing the ridge she spied the huts between the trees—­a congregation of ten or a dozen standing a little way back from a smooth-flowing river.  Between the huts and the river were many saw-pits, with men at work.

At young Adam’s hail the men in view desisted, quite as though he had sounded the dinner horn.  Heads of others emerged from the pits.  Within a minute there was a small crowd gathered, of burly fellows diffusing the fragrance of pine sawdust, all stamped in their degrees with the M’Lauchlin family likeness, and all eager to know the strangers’ business.

Sir Oliver explained that he wanted a boat and two strong guides, to explore the upper waters.  He would pay any price, in moderation.

“Ay,” said their spokesman.  He wore a magnificent iron-grey beard powdered with saw-dust; and he carried a gigantic pair of shoulders, but rheumatism had contracted them to a permanent stoop.  “Ay, I’m no fearin’ about the pay.  You’ll be the rich man, the Collector from Boston.”

Ruth was startled.  She had supposed herself to be travelling deep into the wilderness.  She had yet to learn that in the wilderness, where men traffic in little else, they exchange gossip with incredible energy—­ talk it, in fact, all the time.  In those early colonial days the settlers overleapt and left behind them leagues of primeval forest, to all appearance inviolate.  But the solitude was no longer virgin.  Where foot of man had once parted the undergrowth the very breath of the wind followed and threaded its way after him, bearing messages to and fro.

“I’m no speirin’,” said the oldster cautiously.  “But though our lads have never been so far, there’s talk of a braw house buildin’.”

Here, somewhat hastily, Sir Oliver took him aside, and they spent twenty minutes or so in converse together.  Ruth waited.

He came back and selected young Adam, with a cousin of his—­a taciturn youth, by name Jesse, son of Andrew—­to be their boatman.  Five or six of the young men were evidently eager to be chosen; but none disputed his choice.  Rome, which reaches everywhere, reigned in the forest here; its old law of family unquestioned and absolute.  The two youths swung off to pack and provision the canoe.  An hour later they reported that all was ready; and by three in the afternoon the voyagers were on their way up-stream.

The voyage lasted four days and was seldom laborious; for the river ran in long loops through the table-land, and with an easy current.  But here and there shallow runs of rock made stairways for it from one level to another, and each of these miniature rapids compelled a portage; so that towards the end of the second day the young men had each a red shoulder spot chafed by the canoe’s weight.

They camped by night close beside the murmuring water, ate their supper beside a fire of boughs, slept on piled leaves beneath a tent of canvas stretched over a long ridge-pole.  The two young men had a separate and similar tent.