He led the way, and they went cautiously through the thickets two or
three miles, all the time intently watching the other shore. Twice they
saw Indian sentinels on watch, and knew that they could not risk the
passage. Finally they stopped and waited a full two hours in the
thickets, the contest becoming one of patience.

Meanwhile the night was absolutely silent. The wind was dead, and the
leaves hung straight down. The deep, slow current of the river, although
flowing between narrow banks, made no noise, and Robert's mind, colored
by the conditions of the moment, began to believe that the enemy had
gone away. It was impossible for them to wait so long for foresters whom
they did not see and who might never come. Then he dismissed imagination
and impression, and turned with a wrench to his judgment. He knew enough
of the warriors of the wilderness to know that nobody could wait longer
than they. Patience was one of the chief commodities of savage life,
because their habits were not complex, and all the time in the world was
theirs.

He took lessons, too, from Tayoga and Willet. The Onondaga, an Indian
himself, had an illimitable patience, and Willet, from long practice,
had acquired the ability to remain motionless for hours at a time. He
looked at them as they crouched beside him, still and silent figures in
the dusk, apparently growing from the earth like the bushes about them,
and fixed as they were. The suggestion to go on that had risen to his
lips never passed them and he settled into the same immobility.

Another hour, that was three to Robert, dragged by, and Tayoga led the
way again down the stream, Robert and the hunter following without a
word. They went a long distance and then the Onondaga uttered a whisper