an evidence of true friendship, and gave Réné a grateful smile, which
the latter understood to mean "Very well, Ta-lah-lo-ko, I accept thy
offer of service as heartily as thou dost tender it."

Under ordinary circumstances, Has-se's Indian instinct would not have
permitted him to cross the open water of the bayou in broad daylight
when he suspected that an enemy might be lying in wait for him on its
farther side. On this occasion, however, it seemed so impossible that
the occupants of the canoe, of which he had caught but the merest
glimpse, should have looked back and detected them at the same instant,
that he decided to push on, and if possible discover more of it. So he
and Réné crossed the open water as quickly and with as little noise as
possible, and as they approached its opposite side, Has-se gazed keenly
into the dark lanes between the moss-hung cypresses. He neither saw
nor heard anything to cause him alarm, and congratulating themselves
that they had not been discovered, the boys pushed on over waters of
another extremely narrow stream.

This, to Réné's surprise, flowed, though with an almost imperceptible
current, in the direction they were taking, or exactly opposite to that
of the river they had ascended from the salt-marshes of the east. As
Has-se had requested him to keep absolute silence, and on no account to
speak, he restrained his curiosity for the present, but determined to
seek an explanation of this phenomenon when an opportunity should offer.

He afterwards discovered that the river they had ascended, and that
they were now descending, both rose in the great swamp, and that their
headwaters were connected by navigable streams, but that while one
flowed east into the Atlantic, the other flowed west into the Gulf of
Mexico.