“In part of your assumption you’re right, Will.  Tayoga hasn’t the snow shoes now, and he wouldn’t use ’em if he had ’em.  He foresaw the possibility of the freeze, and took with him in his pack a pair of heavy moose skin moccasins with the hair on the outside.  They’re so rough they do not slip on the ice, especially when they inclose the feet of a runner, so wiry, so agile and so experienced as Tayoga.  Once more I close my eyes and I see his brown figure shooting through the white forest.  He goes even faster than he did when he had on the snow shoes, because whenever he comes to a slope he throws himself back upon his heels and lets himself slide down the ice almost at the speed of a bird darting through the air.”

“If you’re right, Lennox, your red friend is not merely a marvel, but a series of marvels.”

“I’m right, Will.  I do not doubt it.  At the conclusion of the tenth day when Tayoga arrives on the return from the vale of Onondaga you will gladly admit the truth.”

“There can be no doubt about my gladness, Lennox, if it should come true, but the elements seem to have conspired against him, and I’ve learned that in the wilderness the elements count very heavily.”

“Earth, fire and water may all join against him, but at the time appointed he will come.  I know it.”

The great cold, and it was hard, fierce and bitter, lasted two days.  At night the popping of the contracting timbers sounded like a continuous pistol fire, but Willet had foreseen everything.  At his instance, Colden had made the young soldiers gather vast quantities of fuel long ago from a forest which was filled everywhere with dead boughs and fallen timber, the accumulation of scores of years.

Then another great thaw came, and the fickle climate proceeded to show what it could do.  When the thaw had been going on for a day and a night a terrific winter hurricane broke over the forest.  Trees were shattered as if their trunks had been shot through by huge cannon balls.  Here and there long windrows were piled up, and vast areas were a litter of broken boughs.

“As I reckon, and allowing for the marvels you say he can perform, Tayoga is now in the vale of Onondaga, Lennox,” said Wilton.  “It’s lucky that he’s there in the comfortable log houses of his own people, because a man could scarcely live in the forest in such a storm as this, as he would be beaten to death by flying timbers.”

“This time, Will, you’re wrong in both assumptions.  Tayoga has already been to the vale of Onondaga.  He has spent there the half day that he allowed to himself, and now on the return journey has left the vale far behind him.  I told you how sensitive he was to the changes of the weather, and he knew it was coming several hours before it arrived.  He sought at once protection, probably a cleft in the rock, or an opening of two or three feet under a stony ledge.  He is lying there now, just as snug and safe as you please, while this storm, which covers a vast area, rages over his head.  There is much that is primeval in Tayoga, and his comfort and safety make him fairly enjoy the storm.  As he lies under the ledge with his blanket drawn around him, he is warm and dry and his sense of comfort, contrasting his pleasant little den with the fierce storm without, becomes one of luxury.”