d, not long after the sun rose, they
were up and away again. They were now beginning to forge another link in
their chain, and, as usual, the spirits of all five rose when they began
a fresh enterprise. Their feet were light, as they sped forward, and
every sense was acute. They were without fear as they marched on the arc
of the great circle that they had planned. They were leaving so wide a
space between themselves and the great trail that they could only meet a
wandering Indian hunter or two, and of all such they could take care
easily.

In truth, so free were they from any kind of apprehension, that plenty
of room was left in their minds to take note of the wilderness, which
was here new to them. But it was their wilderness, nevertheless, all
these fine streams and rolling hills, and deer that sprang up from their
path, and the magnificent forest everywhere clothing the earth in its
beautiful robe of deepest green, which in the autumn would be an equally
beautiful robe of red and yellow and brown.

Their curve was toward the west, and all that day they followed it. They
saw the golden sun go creeping up the blue arch of the heavens, hang for
a while at the zenith, as if it were poised there to pour down
perpendicular beams, and then go sliding slowly down the western sky to
be lost in a red sea of fire. And the view of all the glory of the
world, though they saw it every day, was fresh and keen to them all. The
shiftless one was moved to speech.

"When I go off to some other planet," he said, "I don't want any new
kind o' a world. I want it to be like this with big rivers and
middle-sized rivers and little rivers, all kinds o' streams an' lakes,
and the woods, green in the spring an' red an' yellow in the fall, an'
winter, too, which hez its beauties with snow an' ice, an' red roarin'
fires to keep you warm, an' the deer an' the buff'ler to hunt. I want
them things 'cause I'm used to 'em. A strange, new kind o' world
wouldn't please me. I hold with the Injuns that want to go to the Happy
Huntin' Grounds, an' I 'xpect it's the kind o' Heaven that the Book
means fur fellers like me."

"Do you think you're good enough to go to Heaven, Sol?" asked Long Jim.

The shiftless one deliberated a moment and then replied thoughtfully:

"I ain't so good, Jim, but I reckon I'm good enough to go to Heaven.
People bein' what people be, an' me bein' what I am, all with a pow'ful
lot to fight ag'inst an' born with somethin' o'