“Why didn’t you take a shot anyhow?” another asked.

“I was creeping up, trying to get closer.  They have had to hide or run upon the heels of our people.”

A number of men were now sitting on the very log in which Jack was hidden.  The young scout saw the legs of a man standing opposite the open end of the log.  Then these memorable words were spoken: 

“This log is good cover for a man to hide in, but nobody is hid in it.  There’s a big spider’s web over the opening.”

There was more talk, in which it came out that nine thousand men were crossing to Gravesend.

“Come on, boys, I’m going back,” said one of the party.  Whereupon they went away.

Dusk was falling.  Jack waited for a move from Solomon.  In a few minutes he heard a stir in the brush.  Then he could dimly see the face of his friend beyond the spider’s web.

“Come on, my son,” the latter whispered.  With a feeling of real regret, Jack rent the veil of the spider and came out of his hiding-place.  He brushed the silken threads from his hair and brow as he whispered: 

“That old spider saved me—­good luck to him!”

“We’ll keep clus together,” Solomon whispered.  “We got to push right on an’ work ’round ’em.  If any one gits in our way, he’ll have to change worlds sudden, that’s all.  We mus’ git to them hosses ’fore midnight.”

Darkness had fallen, but the moon was rising when they set out.  Solomon led the way, with that long, loose stride of his.  Their moccasined feet were about as noiseless as a cat’s.  On and on they went until Solomon stopped suddenly and stood listening and peering into the dark bush beyond.  Jack could hear and see nothing.  Solomon turned and took a new direction without a word and moving with the stealth of a hunted Indian.  Jack followed closely.  Soon they were sinking to their knees in a mossy tamarack swamp, but a few minutes of hard travel brought them to the shore of a pond.

“Wait here till I git the canoe,” Solomon whispered.

The latter crept into a thicket and soon Jack could hear him cautiously shoving his canoe into the water.  A little later the young man sat in the middle of the shell of birch bark while Solomon knelt in its stern with his paddle.  Silently he pushed through the lilied margin of the pond into clear water.  The moon was hidden behind the woods.  The still surface of the pond was now a glossy, dark plane between two starry deeps—­one above, the other beneath.  In the shadow of the forest, near the far shore, Solomon stopped and lifted his voice in the long, weird cry of the great bush owl.  This he repeated three times, when there came an answer out of the woods.

“That’s a warnin’ fer ol’ Joe Thrasher,” Solomon whispered.  “He’ll go out an’ wake up the folks on his road an’ start ’em movin’.”

They landed and Solomon hid his canoe in a thicket.