I have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its direction
served. In the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, at
feud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther on
we came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thickset
undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle
with the bushes.

It was in the densest of this underwood, when we could hear the purring
of the stream ahead, that Jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniff
the air.

"Smoke," he said, briefly, in answer to my query. "A camp-fire, with
meat abroil. Never tell me you can't smell it."

I said I could not--did not, at all events.

"Then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as I am. Call up your
woodcraft and we'll stalk it." And, suiting the action to the word, he
dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of
the thicket.

I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze
with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a
youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was
well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could
be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and
tiger-strong to spring.

In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the
brink of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallow