as the hottest period of the year in America, but the night had come
on cool, and the rain made it cooler. The five, profiting by experience,
often carried with them two light blankets instead of one heavy one.
With one blanket beneath the body they could keep warmer in case the
weather was cold.

Now they lay in a row against the standing wall of the old outhouse,
protected by a six- or seven-foot slant of board roof. They had eaten
of a deer that they had shot in the morning, and they had a sense
of comfort and rest that none of them had known before in many days.
Henry's feelings were much like those that he had experienced when he
lay in the bushes in the little canoe, wrapped up from the storm and
hidden from the Iroquois. But here there was an important increase
of pleasure, the pattering of the rain on the board roof, a pleasant,
soothing sound to which millions of boys, many of them afterwards great
men, have listened in America.

It grew very dark about them, and the pleasant patter, almost musical
in its rhythm, kept up. Not much wind was blowing, and it, too, was
melodious. Henry lay with his head on a little heap of ashes, which
was covered by his under blanket, and, for the first time since he had
brought the warning to Wyoming, he was free from all feeling of danger.
The picture itself of the battle, the defeat, the massacre, the torture,
and of the savage Queen Esther cleaving the heads of the captives, was
at times as vivid as ever, and perhaps would always return now and then
in its original true colors, but the periods between, when youth, hope,
and strength had their way, grew longer and longer.

Now Henry's eyelids sank lower and lower. Physical comfort and the
presence of his comrades caused a deep satisfaction that permeated his
whole being. The light wind mingled pleasantly with the soft summer
rain. The sound of the two grew strangely melodious, almost piercingly
sweet, and then it seemed to be human. They sang together, the wind and
rain, among the leaves, and the note that reached his heart, rather than
his ear, thrilled him with courage and hope. Once more the invisible
voice that had upborne him in the great valley of the Ohio told him,
even here in the ruined valley of Wyoming, that what was lost would be
regained. The chords ended, and the echoes, amazingly clear, floated far
away in the darkness and rain. Henry roused himself, and came from the
imaginative borderland. He stirred a little