an owl. The imitation of the owl was a favorite
signal with the forest runners, both white and red, but Henry knew at
once that this cry was real. Looking long and thoroughly, he saw at last
the feathered and huddled shape on the bough of an oak. It was a huge
owl, and the rays of the moon struck it at such an angle that they made
it look ghostly and unsubstantial. Had Henry been superstitious, had he
been steeped too much in Indian lore, he would have called it a phantom
owl. Nay, it looked, in very truth, like such a phantom, taking the
shape of an owl, and, despite all his mind and courage, a little shudder
ran through him.

Again the great owl cried his loneliness and sorrows to the night. It
was a tremendous note, mournful, uncanny and ferocious, and it seemed to
Henry that it must go miles through the clear air, until it came back in
a dying echo, more sinister than its full strength had been. The Indian
cast was bringing into the net more than Wyatt or any of the warriors
had anticipated, but the owl at least was hooting its defiance.

The singular combination of the night and circumstance affected Henry's
own spirit. He was touched less by the present and reality than by his
sense of another time and the primordial elements became strong within
him. In effect he was transported far back into those dim ages, when man
fought with the stone axe, and his five senses were so preternaturally
acute to protect his life that he had a sixth and perhaps a seventh. A
whiff came on the wind. It was faint, because it had traveled far, but
he knew it to be the odor of the panther. The big cowardly beast was
crouched in a little valley to his right, and he was trembling,
trembling at the approaching warriors, trembling at the great youth who
lay in the depression, trembling at the unknown and monstrous creature
that had plunged its iron claws into him in the dark, and trembling at
the cry of the owl which it had heard so often before, but which struck
now with a new terror upon its small and frightened brain.

Henry's own feeling of the supernatural passed. It was merely the old,
old world in which he must fight for his life and turn aside the bands
from his comrades and himself. Although the warriors had not called
again to one another he divined that they were closing in, and he
thought rapidly and with all the intensity and clearness demanded by the
situation.

The owl hooted once more, the tremendous note swelling far ov