ld lend an additional charm to the melody. Adam Colfax,
stern ruler that he was, never forbade these amusements.

"It isn't well to stop up things too tight," he would say. "Children have
got to make noise, and men are a good deal the same way. If you seal 'em
up they'll bust."

These evening scenes always made a deep impression upon Paul. There were
the cheerful fires, lighted for cooking, and now dying down to great beds
of coals, the surrounding darkness seeming to come closer and closer, but
within it a wide circle of light in which many men sat or reclined at
ease, smoking or talking, or doing both. All were good-natured, the
weather was fair so far, the journey easy, the work not excessively hard,
and the hunters brought in fresh game in plenty.

They passed the mouth of the bayou near which the Chateau of Beaulieu
stood, and Henry and Shif'less Sol went to see it. They found a small
detachment of Spanish soldiers sent by Bernardo Galvez in possession, but
the followers of Alvarez had disappeared. The place seemed lonely and
deserted, as the soldiers of Galvez kept close to the house, as if they
were afraid of the wilderness.

Henry and Shif'less Sol sped back through the forest toward the river.

"Now I wonder," said Shif'less Sol, "what could hev become o' that Spanish
feller. He wuz jest the kind, so proud he wuz, an' thinkin' so much o'
himself, to be burnin' up with hate over what has happened."

"He has made himself an outlaw," said Henry, "and it's my opinion, Sol,
that he's somewhere in these regions. And Braxton Wyatt is with him, too.
That fellow will never rest in his plots against us. We'll hear from them
both again. They'll try for some sort of revenge."

They rejoined the boats at noon, and three or four hours later they saw a
canoe ahead of them upon the water. It contained two occupants who graded
their speed to that of the fleet, keeping well out of rifle-shot.

"What do you take them to be?" called out Adam Colfax to Henry.

"Indians, I know, and spies, I think," replied Henry.

Several of the more powerful boats moved ahead of the fleet and endeavored
to overtake the canoe, but they could not. The two Indians who occupied it
evidently had skill and powerful arms, as they maintained the distance
between themselves and their pursuers. Henry and Paul, stirred by the
interest of the chase, also seized oars and pulled hard, but the canoe
presently turned up a small tributary river, where the