The forest-walled shores of the river grew mightier in their stillness and their grandeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places brooded over the world.

To Kent it was as if they were drifting through Paradise.
Occasionally he found it necessary to work the big sweep, for still water was gradually giving way to a swifter current.
Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform.

It seemed to him that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left farther and still farther behind them.

Watching the shores, looking ahead, listening for sound that might come from behind--at times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their happiness--Kent and Marette found the gulf of strangeness passing swiftly away from between them.
They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the death of John Barkley.

But Kent told of his days in the North, of his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest wildernesses.