"Looks like sense," said Silent Tom.
"You do hev rays o' reason at times, Sol," said Long Jim.
"Then it's agreed," said Henry. "We'll take a little more rest, and, soon after daylight, we'll start on one of our great flying marches."
Paul and Long Jim kept the watch, and, not long after the sun rose, they were up and away again. They were now beginning to forge another link in their chain, and, as usual, the spirits of all five rose when they began a fresh enterprise. Their feet were light, as they sped forward, and every sense was acute. They were without fear as they marched on the arc of the great circle that they had planned. They were leaving so wide a space between themselves and the great trail that they could only meet a wandering Indian hunter or two, and of all such they could take care easily.
In truth, so free were they from any kind of apprehension, that plenty of room was left in their minds to take note of the wilderness, which was here new to them. But it was their wilderness, nevertheless, all these fine streams and rolling hills, and deer that sprang up from their path, and the magnificent forest everywhere clothing the earth in its beautiful robe of deepest green, which in the autumn would be an equally beautiful robe of red and yellow and brown.
Their curve was toward the west, and all that day they followed it. They saw the golden sun go creeping up the blue arch of the heavens, hang for a while at the zenith, as if it were poised there to pour down perpendicular beams, and then go sliding slowly down the western sky to be lost in a red sea of fire. And the view of all the glory of the world, though they saw it every day, was fresh and keen to them all. The shiftless one was moved to speech.
"When I go off to some other planet," he said, "I don't want any new kind o' a world. I want it to be like this with big rivers and middle-sized rivers and little rivers, all kinds o' streams an' lakes, and the woods, green in the spring an' red an' yellow in the fall, an' winter, too, which hez its beauties with snow an' ice, an' red roarin' fires to keep you warm, an' the deer an' the buff'ler to hunt. I want them things 'cause I'm used to 'em. A strange, new kind o' world wouldn't please me. I hold with the Injuns that want to go to the Happy Huntin' Grounds, an' I 'xpect it's the kind o' Heaven that the Book means fur fellers like me."
"Do you think you're good enough to go to Heaven, Sol?" asked Long Jim.
The shiftless one deliberated a moment and then replied thoughtfully:
"I ain't so good, Jim, but I reckon I'm good enough to go to Heaven. People bein' what people be, an' me bein' what I am, all with a pow'ful lot to fight ag'inst an' born with somethin' o' the old Nick in us, an' not bein' able to change our naturs much, no matter how hard we try, I reckon I hev a mighty fine chance o' Heaven, which, ez I said, I want to be a world, right smart like this, only a heap bigger an' finer. But I don't mean to go thar for seventy or eighty years yet, 'cause I want to give this earth a real fa'r trial."