“Whatever you say, Henry,” replied Paul.

The afternoon passed slowly away, and the night came on thick and dark, as Henry had hoped.  The rain fell again in intermittent showers, and it was carried in gusts by the wind.  The two boys drank deeply from the barrel, and ate what was left of the venison.

“Be sure your powder horns are stopped up tight, Paul,” said Henry.  “We’ve got to keep our powder dry.  The sooner we go the better, because the Shawnees won’t be expecting us to come out so soon.”

The darkness was now rolling up so thick and black that to Paul it seemed like a great sable curtain dropping its folds over them.  It enveloped the forest, then the clearing, then the hut, and those within it.  The inky sky was without a star.  The puffs of rain rattled dismally on the roof of the old cabin.  But all this somberness of nature brought comfort and lightness of heart to the besieged.  Paul’s spirits rose with the blackness of the night and the wildness of the rain.

“Are you all ready, Paul?” asked Henry.

“Yes,” replied Paul cheerfully.

Accustomed as they were to the darkness of the cabin, they could not see each other’s faces now, only the merest outlines of their figures.

“We must keep close together,” said Henry.  “It won’t do to lose sight of each other.”

He slipped to the door, lifted the bar and put it soundlessly on one side, and he and Paul stood together in the open space, just a moment, waiting and listening.

The rush of air and raindrops on Paul’s face felt wonderfully cool and invigorating.  His chest expanded and his spirits rose to the top.  It was like leaving a prison behind.

“Step more lightly than you ever did before in your life,” said Henry, and he and Paul put foot together on mother earth.  The very pressure of the damp earth felt good to Paul all the way through his moccasins.  A step or two from the door they paused again, waiting and listening.  The forest was invisible, and so were the stumps in the clearing.  But nothing stirred.  Henry’s acute ear told him that.

“We’ll follow the wall around to the other side of the cabin,” he whispered to Paul.  “They don’t know yet that we’ve come out, and naturally they’ll watch the door closest.  Be careful where you put your feet.”

But the very dampness prevented any rustle in the weeds and grass, and they passed to the other side of the cabin without an alarm coming from the forest.  There they paused again, and once more Henry whispered his instructions.

“I think we’d better get down and crawl,” he said.  “It’s a hard thing to do with two rifles each, but we must do it until we get to the woods.”