It seemed a long time before any sound broke the silence save the regular splash of the oars, then Jervis said quietly:  “Are you quite sure that you are not afraid to marry a poor man, Katherine?”

She looked at him with only a glance, then asked, a trifle unsteadily:  “What do you mean?”

“Well, you might have looked higher, of course.  I have told you how miserably poor my people and I have been.  Thanks to Mr. Selincourt, things are easier with me now; but there is a streak of modesty in me somewhere, and I have been afraid to ask for what I wanted,” he said, with a certain wistfulness of intonation which brought Katherine’s glance round again.

“You need not have been afraid,” she said softly.

“Because why?” he asked, in the tone of one who meant to be answered.

Katherine looked at the tops of the pine trees again, but, finding no help there, let her gaze drop to the dancing water, and finally faltered in a very low voice:  “Because love is better than money, or that sort of thing.”

He bent forward until he could look into her downcast face, then said earnestly:  “You mean, then, it makes no difference to you what my worldly position may chance to be?”

“Of course not; why should it?” she asked, her glance meeting his now in surprise at his earnestness.

Their progress up river was rather slow after that, and it was something over an hour later before they reached the second portage.  Astor M’Kree had started for the swan-shooting by that time, and there was only his delighted wife to scream with joyful relief at the news, that the Mary was riding safely at anchor in the river.

“Poor Astor!  He has been that down he could scarcely take his food,” said Mrs. M’Kree, wiping away the tears which sheer happiness had brought into her eyes.

“Get an extra big supper ready for him, then, for I expect you will find his appetite has come back with a bounce,” said Jervis, laughing.  “You can tell him from me to get on with that new boat as fast as he can, and we will name it the Katherine.”

“Are you joking?” asked Mrs. M’Kree, who had suddenly become very serious, as she looked from Jervis to Katherine, whose face was a study in blushes.

“No, I am quite in earnest,” he answered.  “But we must go now, for we dumped a lot of fish out on the portage path, and I should not be surprised if half the dogs in the neighbourhood are there, sampling it, when we get back.”

“I hope not, or my trouble in bringing it over the long portage will all have been thrown away,” said Katherine, who could not help smiling at the bewilderment on the face of Mrs. M’Kree.

There was no need to row going down the river; they just sat side by side and let the boat drift on the current, while they talked of the present and the future.  Katherine remembered her other journey down, earlier in the afternoon, and the bitter, black misery which had kept her company then.