Then he, too, resumed his journey, and sped swiftly toward the south through the unbroken forest. He came after a while to marshy country, half choked with fallen wood from old storms. He showed his wonderful agility and strength. He leaped rapidly from one fallen log to another and his speed was scarcely diminished. Now and then he saw wide black pools, and once he crossed a deep creek on a fallen tree. Night found him yet in this marshy region, but he was not sorry as he had left no trail behind, and, after looking around some time, he found a little oasis of dry land with a mighty oak tree growing in the center. Here he felt absolutely secure, and, making his supper of dried venison, he lay down under the boughs of the oak, with one blanket beneath him and another above him and was soon in a deep and dreamless sleep.
He awoke about midnight to find a gorgeous parade of the moon and all the stars, and he lay for a while watching them through the leaves of the oak. Powerful are nature and habit, and Henry's life was in accordance with both. Lying alone at midnight on that little knoll in the midst of a great marsh in the country of wary and cruel enemies, he was thankful that it had been given to him to be there, and that his lot had been cast among the conditions that surrounded him.
He heard a slight noise to the left of him, but he knew that it was only another hungry bear stealing about. There was a light splash in the pool at the foot of the knoll, but it was only a large fish leaping up and making a noise as it fell back. Far to the south something gleamed fitfully among the trees, but it was only marsh fire. None of these things disturbed him, and knowing that the wilderness was at peace he laid his head back on the turf and fell asleep again. At break of day he was up and away, and until afternoon he sped toward the south in the long running walk which frontiersmen and Indians could maintain for hours with ease. About 4 o'clock in the afternoon, he stopped as suddenly as if he had come to a river's brink. He had struck a great trail, not a path made by three or four persons but by hundreds. He could see their road a hundred yards wide. Here so many feet had trodden that the grass was yet thinner than elsewhere; there lay the bones of deer, eaten clean and thrown away. Further on was a feather trimmed and dyed that had fallen from a scalp lock, and beyond that, a blanket discarded as too old and ragged lay rotting.