So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather fresh strength for the new day’s measure.

XXI

HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE

’Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in the savage wilderness.  For the actors in any play the trivial details have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.

So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the plain-marked trail to guide us.

At times the march measured a full day’s length amid the columned aisles of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the pine-trees.  Anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no woman-ridden horse could penetrate.

One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn, whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and arabesques against the blue.  But in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay, sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.

Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting us of speech and bidding us go softly.  And after this the march became a soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop forever.

This was the loom on which we wove the backward-reaching web of strenuous onpressing.  But through that web the scarlet thread of famine shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present specter of starvation.