Chapter 9 - Page 2

endurance, but he would not let his body collapse. He knew he must put the danger far behind him before it was a danger passed or even a danger deferred. Calling upon his will anew, he turned toward the southeast and walked many miles through a stony region. Here again he felt that he was watched over by the greater powers, as leaping from stone to stone it was easy to hide his trail, for the time at least. When the last ounce of strength was exhausted he came to a blue pool, ten or fifteen yards across, clear and deep.

He looked at the pool and was about to make another effort to go on, but the blue waters crinkled up and laughed under a light wind, and looked so inviting that he concluded to take the risk. He still felt the dust in eye and ear, mouth and nose. He knew that it was caked upon his face by perspiration, until it had become a mask, and now his whole body tingled like fire with the tiny particles that had stopped up the pores. And there was the pool, clear, blue and beautiful, inviting him to come.

Delaying not an instant longer he threw off his clothing and sprang into the water. It was cold, but it was full of life. New strength shot into every vein. He dived again and again, but without noise, and then, swimming about a minute or two, emerged clean, shining and refreshed. While he stretched himself, flexing and tensing his muscles and drying his body in the sun, a stag, seeking water, came through the forest on the other side of the pool. Perhaps that sense of kinship was felt by the stag, too. It may be that Henry was in spirit an absolute creature of the wild that morning, and by some unknown transmission of knowledge the stag knew it.

However it was, the great deer took no fright, but, sniffing the air once or twice, looked at the great youth, and the great youth looked back at him. Henry would not have harmed any inhabitant of the forest then, and the deer may have read it in his eye, as after his first hesitation he came boldly to the pool and drank his fill. Henry on the other side was dressing rapidly. When the stag had drunk enough he raised his head and gazed out of great mild eyes at the human being who was perhaps the first he had ever seen. Then he turned and stalked majestically into the forest, his mighty antlers visible after his body was hidden.

Henry, lying down in the brown grass, remained a half hour by the pool, and he became a part of the wilderness, recognized as such by the others that dwelled in it. Wild fowl descended upon the water, swam there a while and then flew away, but not because of him. A black bear made havoc in a patch of berries, and paid no attention to the youth.

When he started anew he still kept to the northeast, but he was uncertain about his immediate action. He did not doubt that Red Eagle and his host would pick up his trail some time or other, and would follow with a patience that nothing could discourage. It would not be wise to