He saw that human hands had scraped out at the source a little fountain, where one might dip up pails of water, and looking down into the clear depths he beheld his own face reflected back in every detail.  It seemed to Henry Ware, who knew and loved only the wilderness, that the cabin, with its spring and game at its very doors, would have made a wonderfully snug home in the forest.  Had it been his own, he certainly would have undertaken to defend it against any foe who might come.

But all these thoughts passed in a second, treading upon one another’s heels.  Henry was at the fountain scarcely a moment before he had filled the pot and was on the way back to the cabin.  Then he cast in the herbs, put it upon a bed of red coals, and soon a steam arose.  He found an old, broken-sided gourd among the abandoned utensils, and was able to dip up with it a half dozen drinks of the powerful decoction.  He induced his comrade to swallow these one after another, although they were very bitter, and Paul made a wry face.  Then he drew from the corner the rude bedstead of the departed settler, and made Paul lie upon it beside the fire.

“Now go to sleep,” he said, “while I watch here.”

Paul was a boy of great sense, and he obeyed without question, although it was very hot before the fire.  But it was not a dry, burning heat that seemed to be in the blood; it was a moist, heavy heat that filled the pores.  He began to feel languid and drowsy, and a singular peace stole over him.  It did not matter to him what happened.  He was at rest, and there was his faithful comrade on guard, the comrade who never failed.  The coals glowed deep red, and the sportive flames danced before him.  Happy visions passed through his brain, and then his eyes closed.  The red coals passed away and the sportive flames ceased to dance.  Paul was asleep.

Henry Ware sat in silence on one of the chairs at the corner of the hearth, and when Paul’s breathing became long, deep, and regular, he saw that he had achieved the happy result.  He rose soundlessly, and put his hand upon Paul’s forehead.  It came back damp.  Paul was in a profuse perspiration, and his fever was sinking rapidly.  Henry knew now that it was only a matter of time, but he knew equally well that in the Indian-haunted wilderness time was perhaps the most difficult of all things to obtain.

No uneasiness showed in his manner.  Now the lad, born to be a king of the wilderness, endowed with all the physical qualities, all the acute senses of a great, primitive age, was seen at his best.  He was of one type and his comrade of another, but they were knitted together with threads of steel.  It had fallen to his lot to do a duty in which he could excel, and he would shirk no detail of it.

He brought in fresh wood and piled it on the hearth.  At a corner of the cabin stood an old rain barrel half full of water.  He emptied the barrel and brought it inside.  Then, by means of many trips to the little spring with the iron pot, he filled it with fresh water.  All the while he moved soundlessly, and Paul’s deep, peaceful slumber was not disturbed.  He took on for the time many of the qualities that he had learned from his Indian captors.  Every sense was alert, attuned to hear the slightest sound that might come from the forest, to feel, in fact, any alien presence as it drew near.