f damp.

"Soon it will rain," said Tayoga, "and it will be a bitter cold rain.
Much of the snow will melt and then freeze again, coating the earth
with ice. It will make it more difficult for us to travel and the
hunting that we need so much must be delayed. Then we'll grow hungrier
and hungrier."

"Stop it, Tayoga," exclaimed Robert. "I believe you're torturing me on
purpose. I'm hungry now."

"But that is nothing to what Dagaeoga will be tonight, after he has
gone many hours without food. Then he will think of the juicy venison,
and of the tender steak of the young bear, and of the fine fish from
the mountain streams, and he will remember how he has enjoyed them in
the past, but it will be only a memory. The fish that he craves will
be swimming in the clear waters, and the deer and the bear will be far
away, safe from his bullet."

"I didn't know you had so much malice in your composition, Tayoga, but
there's one consolation; if I suffer you suffer also."

The Onondaga laughed.

"It will give Dagaeoga a chance to test himself," he said. "We know
already that he is brave in battle and skillful on the trail, and now
we will see how he can sit for days and nights without anything to
eat, and not complain. He will be a hero, he will draw in his belt
notch by notch, and never say a word."

"That will do, Tayoga," interrupted the hunter. "While you play upon
Robert's nerves you play upon mine also, and they tell me you've said
enough. Actually I'm beginning to feel famished."

Tayoga laughed once more.

"While I jest with you I jest also with myself," he said. "Now we'll
sleep, since there is nothing else to do."

He drew his blanket up to his eyes, leaned against the stony wall and
slept. Robert could not imitate him. As the long afternoon, one of the
longest he had ever known, trailed its slow length away, he studied
the forest in front of them, where the cold and mournful rain was
still falling, a rain that had at least one advantage, as it had long
since obliterated all traces of a trail left by Tayoga on his scouting
expedition, although search as he would he could find no other profit
in it.

Night came, the rain ceased, and, as Tayoga had predicted, the intense
cold that arrived with the dark, froze it quickly, covering the earth
with a hard and polished glaze, smoother and more treacherous than
glass. It was impossible for the present to undertake flight over
such a surface, with a foe naturally vigil