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 within a
magnificent wood, unchoked by undergrowth. Here the trees stood up in
great, regular rows, ordered by nature, and the brilliant moonlight
clothed every one of them in a veil of silver. On such a bright night in
summer the wilderness always had for him an elusive though powerful
beauty, but he felt its danger. Among the mighty trunks, with no
concealing thickets, he could be seen easily, if prowling savages were
near, and, as he made his circles, he always hastened through what he
called to himself his park, until he came to the bushes, in the density
of which he was well hidden from any eye fifty feet away.