the thrill of the wilderness. Paul's studious face took on
the brown tan of autumn, and even the schoolmaster, a man of years who
liked the ways of civilization, saw only the pleasures of the forest and
closed his eyes to its hardships. But there was none who was caught so
deeply in the spell of the wilderness as Henry, not even Ross nor the
shiftless one. There was something in the spirit of the boy that
responded to the call of the winds through the deep woods, a harking
back to the man primeval, a love for nature and silence.

The forest hid many things from the schoolmaster, but he knew the hearts
of men, and he could read their thoughts in their eyes, and he was the
first to notice the change in Henry or rather less a change than a
deepening and strengthening of a nature that had not found until now its
true medium. The boy did not like to hear them speak of the return, he
loved his people and he would serve them always as best he could, but
they were prosperous and happy back there in Wareville and did not need
him; now the forest beckoned to him, and, speaking to him in a hundred
voices, bade him stay. When he roamed the woods, their majesty and leafy
silence appealed to all his senses. The two vast still rivers threw over
him the spell of mystery, and the secret of the greater one, its hidden
origin, tantalized him. Often he gazed northward along its yellow
current and wondered if he could not pierce that secret. Dimly in his
mind, formed a plan to follow the yellow stream to its source some day,
and again he thrilled with the thought of great adventures and mighty
wanderings, where men of his race had never gone before.

Knowledge, too, came to him with an ease and swiftness that filled with
surprise experienced foresters like Ross and Sol. The woods seemed to
unfold their secrets to him. He learned the nature of all the herbs,
those that might be useful to man and those that might be harmful, he
was already as skillful with a canoe as either the guide or the
shiftless one, he could follow a trail like an Indian, and the habits of
the wild animals he observed with a minute and remembering eye. All the
lore of those far-away primeval ancestors suddenly reappeared in him at
the voice of the woods, and was ready for his use.

"It will not be long until Henry is a man," said Ross one evening as
they sat before their camp fire and saw the boy approaching, a deer that
he had killed borne upon his shoulders.

"He i