hren, and would avoid a foe whom they
could not conquer. He looked for an easy and quiet journey up the Ohio.

"I don't see anything but the ground and the trees," replied Henry,
smiling, but continuing, nevertheless, to search the forest with those
wonderfully keen eyes of his.

"Perhaps we can find game, too," added Adam Colfax. "We need fresh
supplies, and a country deserted like this should be swarming with deer
and buffalo."

"Perhaps," said Henry.

When their boat touched the bank, Henry and Shif'less Sol sprang ashore,
and slid silently into the forest. There they made a wide curve about
the cove that had served as a landing, but found no signs of life except
the tracks of game. After a while they sat down on a log and listened,
but heard nothing save the usual sounds of the forest.

"What do you think of it, Sol?" asked Henry.

"O' course, Henry," replied the shiftless one judiciously, "we've got to
expect trouble sometime or other, but I ain't lookin' fur it yet awhile.
We can't have no dealin's with it till it comes."

Henry shook his head. He believed that the instinct of Shif'less Sol,
usually so alert, was now sleeping. They were sitting in the very
thickest of the forest, and he looked up at the roof of green leaves,
here so dense that only slim triangles of blue sky showed between. The
leaves stirred a little. There was a flash of flame against the green,
but it was only a scarlet tanager that shot past, then a flash of blue,
but it was only a blue jay. Around them, clustering close to the trees,
was the dense undergrowth, and they could not see twenty yards away.

The faint, idle breeze died of languor. The bushes stood up straight.
The leaves hung motionless. The forest, which was always to Henry a live
thing, seemed no longer to breathe. A leaf could have been heard had it
fallen. Then out of that deadly stillness came a sudden note, a strange,
wild song that Henry alone heard. He looked up, but he saw no bird, no
singer of the woods. Yet the leaves were rippling. The wind had risen
again, and it was playing upon the leaves in a mystic, solemn way,
calling words that he knew or seemed to know. He glanced at Shif'less
Sol, but his comrade heard only the wind, raising his head a little
higher that its cool breath might fan his face.

To Henry, always attuned to the wilderness and its spirit, this sudden
voice out of the ominous silence was full of meaning. He started at the
first trill. It was