t expects to
be followed,--as, truly, it is like the Black-Vulture may expect it now.
Do thee be content, friend; there is more paths to Wenonah's town than
them that Wenonga follows; and, truly, we may gain something by taking
the shortest."

Thus satisfying Roland he had good reasons for choosing his own
path, Nathan led the way to the verge of the river; where, leaving the
broad buffalo-trace by which he descended the banks, and diving through
canes and rocks, until he had left the ford to which the path led, a
quarter-mile or more behind, he stopped at last under a grim cliff
overgrown with trees and brambles, where a cove or hollow in the rock, of
a peculiarly wild, solitary, and defensible character, invited him to
take up quarters for the night.

Nor did this seem the first time Wandering Nathan had sought shelter in
the place, which possessed an additional advantage in a little spring
that trickled from the rock, and collected its limpid stores in a rocky
basin hard by; there were divers half-burned brands lying on its sandy
floor, and a bed of fern and cane-leaves, not yet dispersed by the winds,
that had evidently been once pressed by a human form.

"Thee will never see a true man of the woods," said Nathan, with much
apparent self-approval, "build his camp-fire on a roadside, like that
unlucky foolish man, Ralph Stackpole by name, that ferried thee down the
river. Truly, it was a marvel he did not drown thee all, as well as the
poor man Dodge! Here, friend, we can sleep in peace; and, truly, sleep
will be good for thee, and me, and little Peter."

With these words, Nathan set about collecting dried logs and branches,
which former floods had strown in great abundance along the rocks; and
dragging them into the cove, he soon set them in a cheerful blaze. He
then drew forth his stores of provender--the corn and dried meat he had
taken from the Piankeshaws' pouches,--the latter of which, after a
preliminary sop or two in the spring, for the double purpose of washing
off the grains of gunpowder, tobacco, and what not, the usual scrapings
of an Indian's pocket,--and of restoring its long vanished juices,--he
spitted on twigs of cane, and roasted with exceeding patience and
solicitude at the fire. To these dainty viands he added certain cakes and
lumps of some nondescript substance, as Roland supposed it, until assured
by Nathan it was good maple-sugar, and of his own making. "Truly," said
he, "it might have bee