glad of the blanket, and, skilled forest runner that he was, he
never traveled without it. Henry remained perfectly still. The
light canoe did not move beneath his weight the fraction of an
inch. His upturned eyes saw the little cubes of sky that showed
through the leaves grow darker and darker. The bushes about him
were now bending before the wind, which blew steadily from the
south, and presently drops of rain began to fall lightly on the
water.

The boy, alone in the midst of all that vast wilderness,
surrounded by danger in its most cruel forms, and with a black
midnight sky above him, felt neither fear nor awe. Being what
nature and circumstance had made him, he was conscious, instead,
of a deep sense of peace and comfort. He was at ease, in a nest
for the night, and there was only the remotest possibility that
the prying eye of an enemy would see him. The leaves directly
over his head were so thick that they formed a canopy, and, as he
heard the drops fall upon them, it was like the rain on a roof,
that soothes the one beneath its shelter.

Distant lightning flared once or twice, and low thunder rolled
along the southern horizon, but both soon ceased, and then a
rain, not hard, but cold and persistent, began to fall, coming
straight down. Henry saw that it might last all night, but he
merely eased himself a little in the canoe, drew the edges of the
blanket around his chin, and let his eyelids droop.

The rain was now seeping through the leafy canopy of green, but
he did not care. It could not penetrate the close fiber of the
blanket, and the fur cap drawn far down on his head met the