r eyes, they could not see very far into the forest, but they
could see behind them the flame of their own camp fires, a core of light
in the wilderness.

"It might be better to put out all those fires," said Henry, "but I don't
believe Captain Colfax would hear to it. He thinks we're too strong to
fear any serious attack."

"No," said Shif'less Sol, "he wouldn't do it, an' the men would grumble,
too. We've got to be the outside guard ourselves."

The three kept together, continuing their steady patrol in a semi-circle
about the camp, the side of the river being guarded by the boats
themselves. The rain died to a drizzle, but the clouds remained, and the
skies were dark. Hours passed, and nearly everybody slept soundly by the
fires, but the faithful three, gliding among the wet trees and bushes,
still watched.

They heard faint noises in the forest, the passage of the wind, or the
stir of a wild animal, and after a while they heard the long, plaintive
and weird note, with which they were so familiar, the howl of the wolf.

It was characteristic of the three that when this faint note, almost like
the sigh of the wind among the wet trees, reached their ears, they said
nothing, but merely stopped and in the obscurity glanced at one another
with eyes of understanding. They listened patiently, and the low,
plaintive howl came again and then once more, all from different points of
the compass. There had been a time when Henry Ware was deceived for a
moment by these cries, but it was not possible now.

"It must be a gathering of the southern tribes," he said, "and I imagine
that Braxton Wyatt is with them, giving them advice. Sol, suppose that you
go to the right and Tom to the left. I'll stay in the center, and if any
one of us sees an enemy he's to shoot at it and rouse the camp."

The two were gone in an instant, and Henry was left alone. That instant
all the old, primeval instincts, so powerful in him, were aroused. His
sixth sense, the sense of danger, was speaking to him in a voice that he
could not but hear. There, too, was the quaver of the wolf. All the
signals of alarm were set, and he resolved that he should be the first to
see danger when It showed its head.

The clouds piled in heavier masses in the sky, and the darkness thickened.
The wind blew lightly and its sound among the boughs and leaves was a
long, plaintive sigh that had in it a tone like the cry of a woman. The
rain came only in gusts, but when i