"Paul," said Long Jim, "thar is one thing that you kin learn from Sol Hyde, an' that is how to be lazy. Uv course, Sol is lazy all the time, but it's a good thing to be lazy once in a while, ef you pick the right day."
"You don't often tell the truth, Saplin'," said Shif'less Sol, "but you're tellin' it now. Paul, thar bein' nuthin' to do, I'm goin' to lay down ag'in an' go to sleep."
He stretched himself upon a bed of leaves that he had scraped up for himself. His manner expressed the greatest sense of luxury, but suddenly he sat up, his face showing anger.
"What's the matter, Sol?" asked Paul in surprise.
The shiftless one put his hand in his improvised bed and held up an oak leaf. The leaf had been doubled under him.
"Look at that," he said, "an' then you won't have the face to ask me why I wuz oncomf'table. Remember the tale you told us, Paul, about some old Greeks who got so fas-tee-ge-ous one o' 'em couldn't sleep 'cause a rose leaf was doubled under him. That's me, Sol Hyde, all over ag'in. I'm a pow'ful partickler person, with a delicate rearin' an' the instincts o' luxury. How do you expect me to sleep with a thing like that pushed up in the small o' my back. Git out!"
As he said 'Git out,' he threw the leaf from him, lay down again on his woodland couch, and in two minutes was really and peacefully asleep.
"He is shorely won'erful," said Long Jim admiringly. "Think I'll try that myself."
He was somewhat longer than the shiftless one in achieving the task, but in ten minutes he, too, slept. Paul was at last able to do so in the afternoon, when the sun grew warm, and at the coming of the night they prepared to depart.
They traveled a full eight hours, by the stars and the moon, through a country covered with dense forest. Twice they saw distant lights, once to the south and once to the east, and they knew that they were the camp fires of Indians, who feared no enemy here. But when dawn came there was no sign of hostile fire or smoke, and they believed that they were now well in advance of the Indian parties. They shot two wild turkeys from a flock that was "gobbling" in the tall trees, announcing the coming of the day, and cooked them at a fire that they built by the side of a brook. After breakfast Henry and Tom Ross went forward a little to spy out the land, and a half mile further on by the side of the brook they saw two or three faint prints made by the human foot. They examined them long and carefully.