with his feet toward the fire. Again Henry felt an impulse of
respect for him. He was true to his race and his inheritance, while the
renegades were false in everything to theirs. He did not depart from the
customs and thoughts bred into him by many generations, but the
renegades violated every teaching of their own race that had brought
civilization to the world, and he hated and despised them.

He saw Blackstaffe and Wyatt wrap themselves in their blankets and also
lie down with their feet to the fire. All the Indians were at rest save
two sentinels. Henry watched this strange scene a few minutes longer.
The coals were dying fast and now he saw but indistinctly the figures of
white men and red men, joined in a compact to destroy his people
utterly, from the oldest man and woman to the youngest child.

Henry did not know it, but he was as much a knight of chivalry and
romance as any mailed figure that ever rode with glittering lance.
Beneath the buckskin hunting shirt beat a heart as dauntless as that of
Amadis of Gaul or Palmerin of England, although there were no bards in
the great forest to sing of his deeds and of the deeds of those like
him.

He intended to stay only two or three minutes longer, but he lingered
nevertheless. The Indian campfire gave forth hardly a glimmer. The
figures save those of the sentinels became invisible. The wind blew
gently and sang among the leaves, as if the forest were always a forest
of peace, although from time immemorial, throughout the world, it had
been stained by bloodshed. But the forest spell which came over him at
times was upon him now. The rippling of the leaves under the wind he
translated into words, and once more they sang to him the song of
success.

This new task of his, straight through the heart of danger, had been
achieved, and in his modesty, which was a modesty of thought as well as
word, he did not ascribe it to any strength or skill in himself, but to
the fact that a Supreme Being had chosen him for a time as an
instrument, and was working through him. Like nearly all who live in the
forest and spend most of their lives in the presence of nature, he
invariably felt the power of invisible forces, directed by an omniscient
and omnipotent mind, which the Indian has crystallized into the name
Manitou, the same as God to Henry.

For that reason this forest spell was also the spirit of thankfulness.
He had been guided and directed so far, and he felt that the gui