und. He saw ahead among the weeds and
bushes the gleam of standing pools, and he was about to turn back, when
he noticed three or four stones, in a row and about a yard from one
another, projecting slightly above the black muck. It struck him that
the stones would not naturally be in the soft mud, and, his curiosity
aroused, he stepped lightly from one stone to another. When he came to
the last stone that he had seen from the hard ground he beheld several
more that had been hidden from him by the bushes. Sure now that he had
happened upon something not created by nature alone, he followed these
stones, leading like steps into the very depths of the swamp, which was
now deep and dark with ooze all about him. He no longer doubted that the
stones, the artificial presence of which might have escaped the keenest
eye and most logical mind, were placed there for a purpose, and he was
resolved to know its nature.

The stepping stones led him about sixty yards into the swamp, and the
last thirty yards were at an angle from the first thirty. Then he came
to a bit of hard ground, a tiny islet in the mire, upon which he could
stand without sinking at all. He looked back from there, and he could
not see his point of departure. Bushes, weeds, and saplings grew out of
the swamp to a height of a dozen or fifteen feet, and he was inclosed
completely. All the vegetation dripped with cold water, and the place
was one of the most dismal that he had ever seen. But he had no thought
of turning back.

Henry made a shrewd guess as to whither the path led, but he inferred
from the appearance of the stepping stones-chiefly from the fact that
an odd one here and there had sunk completely out of sight-that they had
not been used in a long time, perhaps for years. He found on the other
side of the islet a second line of stones, and they led across a marsh,
that was almost like a black liquid, to another and larger island.

Here the ground was quite firm, supporting a thick growth of large
trees. It seemed to Henry that this island might be seventy or eighty
yards across, and he began at once to explore it. In the center,
surrounded so closely by swamp oaks that they almost formed a living
wall, he found what he had hoped to find, and his relief was so great
that, despite his natural and trained stoicism, he gave a little cry of
pleasure when he saw it.

A small lodge, made chiefly of poles and bark after the Iroquois
fashion, stood within the c