es, for it was
upon them that the forest runners wrote their letters to one another. In
his soul he craved such a letter and he did not really know how
intensely he craved it. The bonds of friendship that united the five
were the ties of countless hardships and dangers shared, and not one of
them would have hesitated an instant to risk his life for any one of the
others.

It was characteristic of Henry's patience and thoroughness that, though
he found nothing, he kept on looking. He wanted a letter, and he wanted
it so long and with so much concentration that he began to believe he
would find it. It was only a short letter that he wished, merely a word
from his friends saying they had passed that way. A straight, tall
figure, with eager, questing eyes, he went on through the silver forest.
When the light wind blew, fragments of the ice that sheathed every bough
and twig fell about him and rattled like silver coins as they struck the
ice below, but mostly the air was quiet, and the glow from a mighty
setting sun began to shoot such deep tints through the silver that it
was luminous with red gold. Thinking little now of its beauty and
majesty, the hunter pressed on, not the hunter of men nor even a hunter
of game, but a hunter for a word.

The mighty sun sank farther. Most of the gold in its rays was gone, and
it burned with an intense red fire, lighting up the icy forest with the
glow of an old, old world. Henry still looked. The dark would come soon,
when he must abandon the search for the word and seek shelter instead.
But his hope was still high that he would find it before night closed
down.

When the red glow was at its deepest he saw in the very core and heart
of it that for which he was looking. Eye-high on the stalwart trunk of
an oak were four parallel slashes from the keen blade of a tomahawk.
They could not have been put there by chance. A powerful hand had
wielded the weapon and the four cuts were precisely horizontal and close
together. He had found his word. It was as plain as day. The four had
passed there and they had left for him a letter telling him all about
it. This was only the first paragraph in the letter, and he would find
others farther on, but he devoted a little time to the examination of
the first.

He studied minutely the cuts and the cloven edges of the bark, and he
decided that they were at least two weeks old. So the letter had been
posted some time since, and doubtless its writers ha