larm
possible game, the two went on silent foot.

No other human beings were present there, but the forest was filled with
inhabitants, and hundreds of eyes regarded the red youth with the bow,
and the white youth with the rifle, as they passed among the trees.
Rabbits looked at them from small red eyes. A muskrat, at a brook's
edge, gazed a moment and then dived from sight. A chipmunk cocked up
his ears, listened and scuttled away.

But most of the population of the forest was in the trees. Squirrels
chattering with anger at the invaders, or with curiosity about them, ran
along the boughs, their bushy tails curving over their backs. A huge
wildcat crouched in a fork, swelled with anger, his eyes reddening and
his sharp claws thrusting forth as he looked at the two beings whom he
instinctively hated much and feared more. The leaves swarmed with birds,
robins and wrens and catbirds and all the feathered tribe keeping up an
incessant quivering and trilling, while a distant woodpecker drummed
portentously on the trunk of an old oak. They too saw the passing
youths, but since no hand was raised to hurt them they sang, in their
way, as they worked and played.

The wilderness spell was strong upon Tayoga, whose ancestors had lived
unknown ages in the forest. The wind from the north as it rustled the
leaves filled his strong lungs and made the great pulses leap. The bow
in his hand fitted into the palm like a knife in its sheath. He heard
the animals and the birds, and the sounds were those to which his
ancestors had listened a thousand years and more. Once again he was
proud of his heritage. He was Tayoga, a coming chief of the Clan of the
Bear, of the nation Onondaga, of the League of the Hodenosaunee, and he
would not exchange places with any man of whom he had heard in all the
world.

The forest was the friend of Tayoga and he knew it. He could name the
trees, the elm and the maple, and the spruce and the cedar and all the
others. He knew the qualities of their wood and bark and the uses for
which every one was best fitted. He noticed particularly the great
maples, so precious to the Iroquois, from which they took sap and made
sugar, and which gave an occasion and name to one of their most sacred
festivals and dances. He also observed the trees from which the best
bows and arrows were made, and the red elms and butternut hickories, the
bark of which served the Iroquois for canoes.

When Tayoga passed through a forest