for, careful as he was, he
occasionally made a slight splash as he put it in the water. The canoes
now kept in single file, almost under the trees on the right bank, for
the lake was here scarce a mile across, and watchful eyes might be on
the lookout on the shore to the left. Another ten miles was passed, and
then the canoes were steered in to the shore.

The guns, blankets, and bundles were lifted out; the canoes raised on
the shoulders of the men, and carried a couple of hundred yards among
the trees; then, with scarcely a word spoken, each man rolled himself
in his blanket and lay down to sleep, four being sent out as scouts in
various directions. Soon after daybreak, all were on foot again,
although it had been arranged that no move should be made till night
set in. No fires were lighted, for they had brought with them a supply
of biscuit and dry deers' flesh sufficient for a week.

"How did you get on yesterday?" Captain Rogers asked, as he came up to
the spot where James had just risen to his feet.

"First rate, captain!" Nat answered for him. "I hardly believed that a
young fellow could have handled a paddle so well, at the first attempt.
He rowed all the way, except just the narrows, and though I don't say
as he was noiseless, he did wonderfully well, and we came along with
the rest as easy as may be."

"I thought I heard a little splash, now and then," the captain said,
smiling; "but it was very slight, and could do no harm where the lake
is two or three miles wide, as it is here. But you will have to lay in
your paddle when we get near the other end, for the sides narrow in
there, and the redskins would hear a fish jump, half a mile away."

During the day the men passed their time in sleep, in mending their
clothes, or in talking quietly together. The use of tea had not yet
become general in America, and the meals were washed down with water
drawn from the lake (where an over-hanging bush shaded the shore from
the sight of anyone on the opposite bank), mixed with rum from the
gourds which all the scouts carried.

Nat spent some time in pointing out, to James, the signs by which the
hunters found their way through the forest; by the moss and lichens
growing more thickly on the side of the trunks of the trees opposed to
the course of the prevailing winds, or by a slight inclination of the
upper boughs of the trees in the same direction.

"An old woodsman can tell," he said, "on the darkest night, on run