that they would start in pursuit as soon as it was light--all this
oppressed him with crushing weight, and made him feel at times as
if there was no escape for him and his loved ones.

"There is only one way of hiding our trail," he mused. "If we could
come upon some river or large stream of water, where there was a
boat, or we could make a raft, we should be safe. A big rainstorm
would do as well, for it would wash out all signs of our footprints."

He paused in his walk and peeped up at a speck of sky shown through
a rift among the limbs.

"There is hardly a cloud; it looks as if it wouldn't rain for a
week, and I don't know of any river between here and the Delaware."

His senses were never more alert. He avoided the fatal mistake of
sitting down for a few minutes, or so much as leaning against a tree
to rest. He stopped, however, now and then and listened intently.

"I wonder whether I am mistaken, or whether I did hear something
moving over the leaves out there?"

The fact that the almost inaudible rustling was noticed only when
he himself was in motion inclined him to suspect it was a delusion,
accounted for by his tense nerves. But after a time he became
certain of a fact hardly less startling in its nature.

When walking back and forth with his face away from the spot where
his friends lay something gleamed a short distance off among the
trees. Its location showed it was on the ground, and, as nearly as