k, however, did not believe that
anything in the nature of danger impended, and that to a great extent he
was taking upon himself an unnecessary hardship.

So far as he could judge, the only possible thing to fear was wild
animals. There were always some of them prowling through this region,
but at that season of the year the wolves and other brutes were not
pressed by hunger, and no matter how fierce the creature, he would not
attempt to pass the mouth of the cavern so long as the fire was burning.
Jack flung a number of sticks on the blaze and then passed outside,
where he was beyond the circle of light. Standing thus, in the gloom of
the night, he felt that the experience of that hour was worth the
journey across the continent.

There was an impressive grandeur in the solitude that he had never felt
before. On every side towered the immense peaks of one of the loftiest
spurs of the grandest mountain chain of America. The crests resembled
piles of blackness, with the stars gleaming behind them, while he, an
insignificant atom, stood with gun by his side in one of the tiny
hollows, as if to guard against attack from the sleeping monsters.

As is always the case, the stillness of the vast solitude seemed unlike
silence, for a low, deep murmur was ever brooding in the air, varied now
and then by the soft voice of some waterfall, borne across the vasty
depths by an eddy in the gentle wind. Once the bark of a wolf sounded so
sharp and clear that the youth started and looked to one side, expecting
to see the animal steal forward from the gloom, but a moment's
reflection told him the brute was a mile or more distant. Then, some
time later, a mournful, wailing cry rose and fell from some remote
point. He suspected that that, too, came from the throat of a wolf, but
he was not sure.

Just a touch of homesickness came over Jack Dudley, and he felt lonely
for the first time since leaving home. As he looked up at the clear sky
he wondered whether his father and mother were well and asleep; whether
they were dreaming of him; whether they missed him from that loved home
and longed for the day when he should return to them.

"Suppose something happens that will prevent my ever seeing them?" he
said to himself, while the tears filled his eyes. "I thought when I
believed that rattlesnake had bitten me to-day that death was sure; and
I was near it, though I was unharmed. We are in more danger here than I
expected; but we are in da