the
farewell, hesitated no longer and plunged into the forest. But he
stopped when he was thirty or forty yards away and looked back. The
chief and the warriors stood side by side as he had left them,
motionless and gazing after him. It was night now and to eyes less keen
than Henry's their forms would have melted into the dusk, but he saw
every outline distinctly, the lean brown features and the black shining
eyes. He waved his hands to them--a white man's action--and resumed his
flight, not looking back again.

It was a dark night and the forest stretched on, black and endless, the
trunks of the trees standing in rows like phantoms of the dusk. Henry
looked up at the moon and the few stars, and reckoned his course.
Wareville lay many hundred miles away, chiefly to the south, and he had
a general idea of the direction, but the war party would know exactly,
and its advantage there would perhaps be compensation for the superior
speed of one man. But Henry, for the present, would not think of such a
disaster as failure; on the contrary he reckoned with nothing but
success, and he felt a marvelous elation.

The decision once taken the rebound had come with great force, and he
felt that he was now about to make atonement for his long neglect, and
more than neglect. Perhaps it had been ordained long ago that he should
be there at the critical moment, see the danger and bring them the
warning that would save. There was consolation in the thought.

He increased his pace and sped southward in the easy trot that he had
learned from his red friends, a gait that he could maintain
indefinitely, and with which he could put ground behind him at a
remarkable rate. His rifle he carried at the trail, his head was bent
slightly forward, and he listened intently to every sound of the forest
as he passed; nothing escaped his ear, whether it was a raccoon stirring
among the branches, a deer startled from its covert, or merely the wind
rustling the leaves. Instinct also told him that the forest was at
peace.

To the ordinary man the night with its dusk, the wilderness with its
ghostly tree trunks, and the silence would have been full of weirdness
and awe, black with omens and presages. Few would not have chilled to
the marrow to be alone there, but to Henry it brought only hope and the
thrill of exultation. He had no sense of loneliness, the forest hid no
secrets for him; this was home and he merely passed through it on a
great quest.