rm was suddenly thrust from the grass and a hand closing on the
powder horn took it away. Henry felt that it was well filled and heavy
and he glowed with triumph. The first link in his chain had been forged.
He crept back into the bushes, and stopped there twice, lying very
still. He saw the Indian sentinels moving about a little, but evidently
they suspected nothing. They were merely changing positions and quickly
relapsed into silence and stillness.

It was fully half an hour before Henry was back at his place opposite
the swinging little canoe. Then he shook the powder horn triumphantly,
put it down at the foot of a tree and covered it up with some leaves. As
he did so he noticed that many of last year's leaves were quite dry and
he remembered it.

Then he went back to forge the second link, which was not so difficult.
The fire around which the white men and the chiefs had eaten their
supper was a little distance back of the present camp, where he was
quite sure that it was still smoldering, although deserted. He found a
stick the end of which was yet a live coal, and circling a little wider
on his return he came back to the powder horn.

Henry held the live point of the stick close to the ground where it
could not cast a glow that the sentinels might see, and then waited a
minute or so before taking any further action. Two links of the chain
had been forged and he felt now that he would carry it to its full
length and success. He had never been more skillful, never more in
command of all his faculties, and they had never worked in more perfect
coordination. There had never been a more perfect type of the human
physical machine. Nature, in one of her happy moods, had lavished upon
him all her gifts and now he was using them to the utmost, turning his
ten talents into twenty.

The third link would be one of great difficulty, much harder than the
bringing of the fire, and that was the reason why he was considering so
well. He could discern the figures of three of the sentinels on land.
Two of them were brawny warriors naked to the waist, and painted
heavily. The third was quite young, younger than himself, a mere boy,
perhaps on his first war path. Henry understood the feelings of hope and
ambition that probably animated the Indian boy and he trusted that they
would not come into conflict.

The sentinels were walking about, and when the one nearest him turned
and moved away he gathered up quickly fallen brushwood