It was but twenty-four hours since they had reached the lake, in the course of a long camping expedition involving the company of two guides, a couple of half-breed _voyageurs_, and a string of sixteen horses.

No white foot had ever before trodden the slender beaches of the lake; its beauty of forest and water, of peak and crag, of sun and shadow, the terror of its storms, the loveliness of its summer--only some stray Indian hunter, once or twice in a century perhaps, throughout all the aeons of human history, had ever beheld them.
But now, here were Anderson and Elizabeth!--first invaders of an inviolate nature, pioneers of a long future line of travellers and worshippers.
They had spent the day of summer sunshine in canoeing on the broad waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt sheer into the glistening water.

Now they were floating slowly towards the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of white tents, and the smoke of a fire was rising into the evening air.
Sunset was on the jagged and snow-clad heights that shut in the lake to the eastward.

The rose of the sky had been caught by the water and interwoven with its own lustrous browns and cool blues; while fathom-deep beneath the shining web of colour gleamed the reflected snows and the forest slopes sliding downwards to infinity.

A few bird-notes were in the air--the scream of an eagle, the note of a whip-poor-will, and far away across the lake a dense flight of wild duck rose above a reedy river-mouth, black against a pale band of sky.
They were close now to the shore, and to a spot where lightning and storm had ravaged the pines and left a few open spaces for the sun to work.