ll
you boasters, but knowing it, I don't. Go ahead and spout language,
because you're only lads and I can see that you enjoy it."

"I'm going to sleep now," said Tayoga, "but Dagaeoga can keep on talking
and be happy, because he will talk to himself long after we have gone to
the land of dreams."

"If I do talk to myself," said Robert, "it's because I like to talk to
a bright fellow, and I like to have a bright fellow talk to me. Sleep as
soundly as you please, you two, because while you're sleeping I can
carry on an intellectual conversation."

The hunter laughed again.

"It's no use, Tayoga," he said. "You can't put him down. The fifty wise
old sachems in the vale of Onondaga proclaimed him a great orator, and
great orators must always have their way."

"It is so," said the Onondaga. "The voice of Dagaeoga is like a river.
It flows on forever, and like the murmur of the stream it will soothe me
to deeper slumbers. Now I sleep."

"And so do I," said the hunter.

It seemed marvelous that such formal announcements should be followed by
fact, but within three minutes both went to that pleasant land of dreams
of which they had been talking so lightly. Their breathing was long and
regular and, beyond a doubt, they had put absolute faith in their
sentinel. Robert's mind, so quick to respond to obvious confidence,
glowed with resolve. There was no danger now that he would relax the
needed vigilance a particle, and, rifle in the hollow of his arm, he
began softly to patrol the bushes.

He was convinced that De Courcelles and Tandakora were not many miles
away--they might even be within a mile--and memory of a former occasion,
somewhat similar, when Tayoga had detected the presence of the Ojibway,
roused his emulation. He was determined that, while he was on watch, no
creeping savage should come near enough to strike.

Hand on the hammer and trigger of his rifle he walked in an ever
widening circle about his sleeping comrades, searching the thickets with
eyes, good naturally and trained highly, and stopping now and then to
listen. Two or three times he put his ear to the earth that he might
hear, as Tayoga had bade him, the rustle of leaves a mile away.

His eager spirit, always impatient for action, found relief in the
continuous walking, and the steady enlargement of the circle in which he
traveled, acquiring soon a radius of several hundred yards. On the
western perimeter he was beyond the deep thicket, and withi