est, beneath us in
quality, nor are we crowded by any of our fellow lodgers."

"True! True!" said Paul, his bright eyes shining with his quick spirit,
"and it is a most noble apartment that we have chosen. I have seldom
been in one more spacious. My eyes are good, but good as they are I
cannot see the ceiling, it is so high. I look to right and left, and the
walls are so far away that they are hidden in the dark."

"Correctly spoken, Mr. Cotter," said Henry taking up the thread of talk,
"and our inn has more than size to speak for it. It is furnished most
beautifully. I do not know of another that has in it so good a larder.
Its great specialty is game. It has too a most wonderful and plenteous
supply of pure fresh water and that being so I propose that we get a
drink and go to bed."

The two boys went down to the little brook that ran near, and drank
heartily. They then returned within the ring of fire.

They were thoroughly tired and sleepy, and they quickly threw themselves
down upon the soft warm earth, pillowing their heads on their arms, and
the great Kaintuckee Inn bent over them a roof of soft, summer skies.

But the wilderness never sleeps, and its people knew that night that a
stranger breed was abroad among them. The wind rose a little, and its
song among the burned branches became by turns a music and a moan. The
last cinder died, the earth cooled, and the forest creatures began to
stir in the woodland aisles where the fire had passed. The disaster had
come and gone, and perhaps it was already out of their memories forever.
Rabbits timidly sought their old nests. A wild cat climbed a tree,
scarcely yet cool beneath his claws, and looked with red and staring
eyes at the ring of fire that formed a core of light in the forest, and
the two extraordinary beings that slept within its shelter. A deer came
down to the brook to drink, snorted at the sight of the red gleam among
the trees, and then, when the strange odor came on the wind to its
nostrils, fled in wild fright through the forest.

The news, in some way unknown to man, was carried to all the forest
creatures. A new species, strange, unexplainable, had come among them,
and they were filled with curiosity. Even the weak who had need to fear
the strong, edged as near as they dared, and gazed at the singular
beings who lay inside the red blaze. The wild cat crawled far out on the
bare bough, and stared, half afraid, half curious, and also angry at the
i