No doubt Stackpole noticed that Owen, having made his bed ready, showed no disposition to occupy the same; but if he understood just why, he at least made no comment, in which he displayed his good sense.
He turned in "all standing," simply lying down, rolling himself up in his faded blanket, and with his pack-bag for a pillow, losing himself to the world, so far as the boys could tell; though they noticed that he had pulled his slouch hat so far down over his face that it was utterly impossible to see whether his keen eyes were closed or watching every movement of his entertainers.
Inside the tent our friends found a chance to confer, and thus a plan of campaign for the night was laid down.
Then Cuthbert and Eli crawled into their sleeping-bags, for the night was inclined to be frosty, and there is a world of comfort in these modern contrivances, under such conditions; while Owen walked down to the canoes, and with an arm thrown caressingly across the keel of the precious cedar craft began his long and lonely vigil.
He thought nothing of such a little hardship, having been accustomed to the vicissitudes of the woods from childhood—to him the various sounds of the wilderness, after nightfall had come, were as familiar as the cackling of hens to a farmer's lad, and what was more to the point he read these signs so well that they one and all possessed a significance far beyond any surface indications.
But these forests of the Silent Land bear little comparison with the depths of a tropical jungle, or the dense growth of an African wilderness where a multitude of animals make the air vibrate with their roaring during the entire period of darkness.
Sometimes in the daytime not a sound can be heard save the moaning of the wind among the tops of the pines, or the gurgle of some meandering stream, all around being absolute silence, deep and profound.
At night it? is not quite so bad, for then the hooting of a vagrant owl, or it may be the distant howl of a prowling timber wolf, that gray skulker of the pine lands, is apt to break the monotony; but even in the midst of summer there is lacking the hum of insects and the bustle of woods life—at best one hears the weird call of the whip-poor-will, called by the Indians, the "wish-a-wish," or if near a marsh the croaking of gigantic bullfrogs.
Owen apparently had many things to engage his thoughts as he kept watch and ward over the camp of his new-found friends; and judging from his repeated sighs his self-communion was hardly of a cheerful character, for several times the boy gritted his teeth savagely, and clinched his fist as though rebelling against some decree of fate that had temporarily upset his calculations.
Once a name escaped his lips, and it was that of the old factor in charge of the Hudson Bay trading post further up the river; and almost in the same breath he murmured the word "mother," tenderly, as though his thoughts had flown backward to happy scenes so greatly in contrast with his present forlorn conditions.