"But surely it is so!" said the young forester fiercely.
"I'm at your mercy."
"We ain't goin' to burn you now," said Shif'less Sol. "We can't afford to set up a big torch in the forest, with our enemies so near."
Cawthorne shivered.
"Do you still feel," asked Henry, "that you're the ruler over the wilderness here, five thousand miles from London?"
"Technically only. At the present time I'm making no boasts."
"Now, you go back to your colonel and the renegades and the red chiefs and tell them they'll find no thoroughfare to the white settlements."
"So, you don't mean to kill me?"
"No, we don't do that sort of thing. Since we can't hold you a prisoner now, we release you. It's likely that you don't know your way to your own camp, but your red comrade here will guide you. My friend didn't break his skull, when he struck him with the butt of his rifle, though it was a shrewd blow. He's coming to."
Cawthorne looked down at the reviving savage, and then looked up to thank the foresters, but they were gone. They had vanished so quickly and silently that he had not heard them going. Had it not been for the savage who was now sitting up he would not have believed that it was real.