ty that few men felt for their own acres, but he had been
away a long time, a time, moreover, so crowded with events that it
seemed far greater than reality.

He did not yet awaken Paul and the schoolmaster, but, putting more power
in his arms, he sent the boat on more swiftly. When he turned a point
where a little peninsula, covered with forest, jutted into the river, he
let the paddle swing idly for a minute or two and listened. A steady
thudding sound, as regular as the beat of a drum, though slower, came to
his ears. It was the woodsman's ax, and, for a moment, Henry flinched as
if he himself lay beneath the blade. That ax was eating into his beloved
forest, and a hundred more axes were doing the same. Then he recovered
himself. The hundred axes might eat on, the hundred might become a
thousand, and the thousand ten thousand, but they could eat only the
edge of his wilderness which stretched away thousands of miles in every
direction. The trees, and with them the deer and the bear, would be
there long beyond his time, though he might live to be a hundred, and
beyond that of the generation after. He took comfort in the thought, and
once more felt deep content.

It was not solely as a hunter and scout that Henry loved the wilderness.
Forest and river and lake touched far deeper springs in his nature. They
were for him full of beauty and majesty. Green forest in spring and red
forest in autumn alike appealed to him. Brooks, rivers and lakes were
alive. When duty did not call he could sit perfectly motionless for
hours, happy to see the wilderness and to feel that it was all about
him.

He swung the paddle again, and the boat moved leisurely forward. The
ring of the ax grew louder, and he heard others to the right and to the
left. Presently something struck with a crash and, in spite of all his
reasoning with himself, Henry sighed. A great tree cut through by the ax
had fallen. Many others had gone in the same way, and many more would
follow. The spire of smoke was attended now by smaller spires and
Wareville could not be more than three miles away. He awakened Paul and
the schoolmaster.

"We shall be at home in less than an hour," he said. "Listen to the
axes!"

Paul glanced quickly at him. His fine and sensitive mind understood at
once the inflection in Henry's voice, and he sympathized.

"But they are our own people," he said, "and they are making homes which
we must help to defend."

"A stronghold in the wi