know about the woods beats all. Haven't you seen
anybody pack things before? I'll show you. When there's big game handy
is no time to quarrel. If a pack's too heavy, halve it. Watch and
learn something."

Pierre could be both swift and dexterous if he chose, and he rapidly
unrolled and divided the contents of the cotton tent. Putting part
into the blanket he retied the rest in the sheeting, and now neither
bundle was a very severe tax.

"Whew! What's the sense of that? It's the same weight. How does
halving it help?"

Pierre swung the canoe upon his head and directed:

"Catch hold them straps. Carry one a few rods. Drop it. Come back
after the other. Carry that a ways beyond the first. Drop it. Get
number one. All time lap over, beyond, over, beyond. So."

With a stick he illustrated on the ground, and wasting no further time
nor speech, clasped his gun the tighter under his arm and trotted
forward again.

Adrian obeyed instructions, and though it seemed, at first, a waste to
go back and forth along the carry as he had been directed, found that,
in the end, he had accomplished his task with small fatigue or delay.

"Another bit of woodcraft for my knowledge box. Useful elsewhere, too.
Wish I could get through this country as fast as Pierre does. But
he'll have to wait for me, anyway."

For a time Adrian could easily trace the route of his guide by the
bruises the canoe had given the leaves and undergrowth but after
awhile the forest grew more open and this trail was lost. Then he
stopped to consider. He had no intention of losing himself again.

"We are aiming for the south. Good. All the big branches of these
hemlocks point that way--so yonder's my road. Queer, too, how mossy
the tree trunks are on the north sides. I've heard that you could drop
an Indian anywhere in any forest and he'd travel to either point of
the compass he desired with nothing to guide him but his instinct.
Wish I were an Indian! Wish, rather, I had my own compass and good
outfit that went over in my canoe. Hurrah! There's a glimmer of
water. That's the thoroughfare. Now a dash for it!"

Adrian was proud of his new skill in finding his own way through a
trackless forest, but though he duly reached the stream he could not
for a time see anything of Pierre. He did not wish to shout, lest the
moose might be near and take fright, but at last he did give a faint
halloo and an answer came at once. Then the boat shot out from behind
a clump o