topped
entirely, and standing against a huge tree trunk, with which his figure
blended in the night, he took deep breaths.

At first he felt weakness. No one, no matter how powerful and well
trained, could run so long without putting an immense strain upon the
nerves, and for a little space bushes and trees danced before him. Then
the world steadied itself, his heart ceased to beat so hard and the
suffusion of blood retreated from his head. He saw nothing nor heard
anything of his foes, but he knew that the pursuit would not cease. He
felt that this was his great flight, one that might go on for days and
nights, in which every faculty he had would be tested to the utmost, but
he was willing for it to be so. The longer the flight continued the
further he would draw away from the Indian power, and that was what he
wished most of all. He would make such a fugitive as the chiefs had
never known before.

Henry stood a full fifteen minutes beside the brown trunk of the tree,
of which in the dark he seemed to be a part, and so great was his
physical power and elasticity that the time was sufficient to restore
all his strength. When he thought he caught a glimpse of a bush moving
behind him, he resumed the long running walk that covered ground so
rapidly. An hour later he came to a brook, in the bed of which he walked
fully a mile. But he did not expect this to bother his pursuers very
long. They would send warriors up and down either bank until in the
moonlight they struck the trail anew, and then they would follow as
before. But it would give him time, and not doubting that he would find
some new circumstance to aid him, it came sooner than he had expected or
hoped.

Less than half a mile farther he encountered the wreckage left by a
hurricane of some former season, a path not more than three hundred
yards wide, a perfect tangle of fallen trees, amid which bushes were
already growing. The windrow led two or three miles to the northeast,
and he walked all the way on the trunks, slipping lightly from tree to
tree. It was now late, and as the night fortunately began to turn
considerably darker, he bethought himself of a place in which to sleep,
because in time sleep one must have, whether or not a fugitive.

As he considered, he heard ahead of him a faint puffing and blowing
which he knew to come from buffaloes, and their presence indicated one
of the little prairies in which the country north of the Ohio abounded.
He made