aloes and his excessive exertions.

But he had escaped. Nothing could alter the fact. When he had been
surrounded so completely by powerful foes that his destruction seemed
inevitable a miraculous way had been opened through their lines. Kindly
chance had drooped about him an impenetrable veil and he had passed his
enemies unseen. His first emotion was of deep thankfulness and gratitude
to the power that had saved him.

The pace of the herd sank to a walk. The light wind caught the last
streamers of dust and carried them away over the trees. Then some of the
buffaloes, puffing with exhaustion, stopped, and Henry, coming back
wholly to himself, turned aside into the deep forest. But he gave a
parting wave of his hand to the great animals that had enabled him to
make his invisible flight. Never again would he kill a buffalo without
reluctance.

An immense weariness came suddenly upon him. One could not run so far
with a herd without draining to their depths the reservoirs of human
endurance, but he would not let his body collapse. He knew he must put
the danger far behind him before it was a danger passed or even a danger
deferred. Calling upon his will anew, he turned toward the southeast and
walked many miles through a stony region. Here again he felt that he was
watched over by the greater powers, as leaping from stone to stone it
was easy to hide his trail, for the time at least. When the last ounce
of strength was exhausted he came to a blue pool, ten or fifteen yards
across, clear and deep.

He looked at the pool and was about to make another effort to go on, but
the blue waters crinkled up and laughed under a light wind, and looked
so inviting that he concluded to take the risk. He still felt the dust
in eye and ear, mouth and nose. He knew that it was caked upon his face
by perspiration, until it had become a mask, and now his whole body
tingled like fire with the tiny particles that had stopped up the pores.
And there was the pool, clear, blue and beautiful, inviting him to come.

Delaying not an instant longer he threw off his clothing and sprang into
the water. It was cold, but it was full of life. New strength shot into
every vein. He dived again and again, but without noise, and then,
swimming about a minute or two, emerged clean, shining and refreshed.
While he stretched himself, flexing and tensing his muscles and drying
his body in the sun, a stag, seeking water, came through the forest on
the other s