ore sober its
plumage the finer was its song. He understood those musical notes
too. They expressed sheer delight, the joy of life just as he felt it
then himself, and the kinship between the two was strong.

The bird at last flew away and the Onondaga heard its song dying among
the distant leaves. A portion of the forest spell departed with it,
and Tayoga, returning to thoughts of his task, rose and walked on,
instinct rather than will causing him to keep a close watch on earth
and foliage. When he saw the faint trace of a large moccasin on the
earth all that was left of the spell departed suddenly and he became
at once the wilderness warrior, active, alert, ready to read every
sign.

He studied the imprint, which turned in, and hence had been made by an
Indian. Its great size too indicated to him that it might be that of
Tandakora, a belief becoming with him almost a certainty as he found
other and similar traces farther on. He followed them about a mile,
reaching stony ground where they vanished altogether, and then he
turned to the west.

The fact that Tandakora was so near, and might approach again was not
unpleasant to him, as Tayoga, having all the soul of a warrior, was
anxious to match himself with the gigantic Ojibway, and since the war
was now active on the border it seemed that the opportunity might
come. But his attention must be occupied with something else for the
present, and he went toward the west for a full hour through the
primeval forest. Now and then he stopped to listen, even lying down
and putting his ear to the ground, but the sounds he heard, although
varied and many, were natural to the wild.

He knew them all. The steady tapping was a woodpecker at work upon an
old tree. The faint musical note was another little gray bird singing
the delight of his soul as he perched himself upon a twig; the light
shuffling noise was the tread of a bear hunting succulent nuts; a
caw-caw so distant that it was like an echo was the voice of a
circling crow, and the tiny trickling noise that only the keenest ear
could have heard was made by a brook a yard wide taking a terrific
plunge over a precipice six inches high. The rustling, one great
blended note, universal but soft, was that of the leaves moving in
harmony before the gentle wind.

The young Onondaga was sure that the forest held no alien
presence. The traces of Tandakora were hours old, and he must now be
many miles away with his band, and, such