s a man now," said the schoolmaster with gravity and emphasis as he
looked attentively at the figure of the youth carrying the deer. No one
ever before had given him such an impression of strength and physical
alertness. He seemed to have grown, to have expanded visibly since their
departure from Wareville. The muscles of his arm stood up under the
close-fitting deerskin tunic, and the length of limb and breadth of
shoulder in the boy indicated a coming man of giant mold.

"What a hunter and warrior he will make!" said Ross.

"A future leader of wilderness men," said Mr. Pennypacker softly, "but
there is wild blood in those veins; he will have to be handled well."

Henry threw down the deer and greeted them with cheerful words that came
spontaneously from a joyful soul. They had built their fire, not a large
one, in an oak opening and all around the trees rose like a mighty
circular wall. The red shadows of a sun that had just set lingered on
the western edge of the forest, but in the east all was black. Out of
this vastness came the rustling sound of the wind as it moved among the
autumn leaves. In the opening was a core of ruddy light and the living
forms of men, but it was only a tiny spot in the immeasurable
wilderness.

The schoolmaster and he alone felt their littleness. The autumn night
was crisp, and from his seat on a log he held out his fingers to the
warm blaze. Now and then a yellow or red leaf caught in the light wind
drifted to his feet and he gazed up half in fear at the great encircling
wall of blackness. Then he uttered silent thanks that he was with such
trusty men as the guide and the shiftless one.

The effect upon Henry was not the same. He had become silent while the
others talked, and he half reclined against a tree, looking at the sky
that showed a dim and shadowy disk through the opening. But there was
nothing of fear in his mind. A delicious sense of peace and satisfaction
crept over him. All the voices of the night seemed familiar and good. A
lizard slipped through the grass and the eye and ear of Henry alone
noticed it; neither the guide nor the shiftless one had seen or heard
its passage. He measured the disk of the heavens with his glance and
foretold unerringly whether it would be clear or cloudy on the morrow,
and when something rustled in the woods, he knew, without looking, that
it was a hare frightened by the blaze fleeing from its covert. A tiny
brook trickled at the far edge of t