He looked up at the moon and stars, and confirmed himself in his course,
though he never slackened speed as he looked. He came out of the forest
upon a prairie, and here the moonlight was brighter, touching the crests
of the swells with silver spear-points. A dozen buffaloes rose up and
snorted as he flitted by, but he scarcely bestowed a passing glance upon
the black bulk of the animals. The prairie was only two or three miles
across, and at the far edge flowed a shallow creek which he crossed at
full speed, and entered the forest again. Now he came to rough country,
steep little hills, and a dense undergrowth of interlacing bushes, and
twining thorny vines. But he made his way through them in a manner that
only one forest-bred could compass, and pressed on with speed but little
slackened.

When the night became darkest, in the forest just before morning he lay
down in the deepest shadow of a thicket, his hand upon his rifle, and in
a few minutes was sleeping soundly. It was a matter of training with him
to sleep whenever sleep was needed and he had no nerves. He knew, too,
despite his haste that he must save his strength, and he did not
hesitate to follow the counsels of prudence.

It was his will that he should sleep about four hours, and, his system
obeying the wish, he awoke at the appointed time. The sun was rising
over the vast, green wilderness, lighting up a world seemingly as lonely
and deserted as it had been the night before. The unbroken forest,
touched with the tender tints of young spring and bathed in the pure
light of the first dawn, bent gently to a west wind that breathed only
of peace.

Henry stood up and inhaled the odorous air. He was a striking figure,
yet a few yards away he would have been visible only to the trained eye;
his half-savage garb of tanned deerskin, stained green and trimmed at
the edges with green beads and little green feathers, blended with the
colors of the forest and merely made a harmonious note in the whole. His
figure compact, powerful and always poised as if ready for a spring
swayed slightly, while his eyes that missed nothing searched every nook
in the circling woods. He was then neither the savage nor the civilized
man, but he had many of the qualities of both.

The slight swaying motion of his body ceased suddenly and he remained as
still as a rock. He seemed to be a part of the green bushes that grew
around him, yet he was never more watchful, never more alert. Th