Joe made a movement to rise with her, when she muttered indistinctly as if speaking to some one.  He remembered then she had once told him that she talked in her sleep, and how greatly it annoyed her.  He might hear something more with which to tease her; so he listened.

“Yes—­uncle—­I will go—­Kate, we must—­go. . .”

Another interval of silence, then more murmurings.  He distinguished his own name, and presently she called clearly, as if answering some inward questioner.

“I—­love him—­yes—­I love Joe—­he has mastered me.  Yet I wish he were—­like Jim—­Jim who looked at me—­so—­with his deep eyes—­and I. . . .”

Joe lifted her as if she were a baby, and carrying her down to the raft, gently laid her by her sleeping sister.

The innocent words which he should not have heard were like a blow.  What she would never have acknowledged in her waking hours had been revealed in her dreams.  He recalled the glance of Jim’s eyes as it had rested on Nell many times that day, and now these things were most significant.

He found at the end of the island a great, mossy stone.  On this he climbed, and sat where the moonlight streamed upon him.  Gradually that cold bitterness died out from his face, as it passed from his heart, and once more he became engrossed in the silver sheen on the water, the lapping of the waves on the pebbly beach, and in that speaking, mysterious silence of the woods.

* * *

When the first faint rays of red streaked over the eastern hill-tops, and the river mist arose from the water in a vapory cloud, Jeff Lynn rolled out of his blanket, stretched his long limbs, and gave a hearty call to the morning.  His cheerful welcome awakened all the voyagers except Joe, who had spent the night in watching and the early morning in fishing.

“Wal, I’ll be darned,” ejaculated Jeff as he saw Joe.  “Up afore me, an’ ketched a string of fish.”

“What are they?” asked Joe, holding up several bronze-backed fish.

“Bass—­black bass, an’ thet big feller is a lammin’ hefty ’un.  How’d ye ketch ’em?”

“I fished for them.”

“Wal, so it ’pears,” growled Jeff, once more reluctantly yielding to his admiration for the lad.  “How’d ye wake up so early?”

“I stayed up all night.  I saw three deer swim from the mainland, but nothing else came around.”

“Try yer hand at cleanin’ ’em fer breakfast,” continued Jeff, beginning to busy himself with preparations for that meal.  “Wal, wal, if he ain’t surprisin’!  He’ll do somethin’ out here on the frontier, sure as I’m a born sinner,” he muttered to himself, wagging his head in his quaint manner.

Breakfast over, Jeff transferred the horses to the smaller raft, which he had cut loose from his own, and, giving a few directions to Bill, started down-stream with Mr. Wells and the girls.

The rafts remained close together for a while, but as the current quickened and was more skillfully taken advantage of by Jeff, the larger raft gained considerable headway, gradually widening the gap between the two.