"That is not probable. What could he gain by such a course?"
"Larn the way to that sittlement of which yees were spaking."
"I should not wonder if Pat were right," said Virginia. "I have heard evidence of his presence several times."
"Let us listen. The wind may have made all the sounds you have heard."
For the space of fifteen or twenty minutes, the whites maintained silence, but there was nothing heard farther, and they fell to conversing again.
The situation of our friends, although not without the grand comforter, hope, was still gloomy and impressive. On either hand, the dark, frowning forests loomed up and the wind sighing through them, made wildly-mournful music—now roaring like a hurricane, and then dying away in a hollow, desolate moaning. Occasionally the sharp scream of some wild animal was borne forward upon the night wind, and once or twice the reports of rifles showed that the Indian, the far wilder animal of the two, was "abroad upon the night."
The wind raised small waves upon the surface of the river, and they rippled along the shore, and around the projecting roots of the trees that grew upon the banks. Even their own voices sounded differently upon this wild night. But they were sustained by the prospect of speedy deliverance and shelter, and were more hopeful than they had been since their first memorable disaster.
In the course of half an hour the river made another bend, and the wind now blew directly up stream. The onward motion of the canoe grew less and less, and finally it stopped altogether.
"This will never do," said Waring, when he had satisfied himself how matters stood. "It will be a long while before we reach the settlement at this rate."
"Let's put into shore, and scare up some kind of paddle for each of us to go to work with."