“How did you get on yesterday?” Captain Rogers asked, as he came up to the spot where James had just risen to his feet.

“First rate, captain!” Nat answered for him.  “I hardly believed that a young fellow could have handled a paddle so well, at the first attempt.  He rowed all the way, except just the narrows, and though I don’t say as he was noiseless, he did wonderfully well, and we came along with the rest as easy as may be.”

“I thought I heard a little splash, now and then,” the captain said, smiling; “but it was very slight, and could do no harm where the lake is two or three miles wide, as it is here.  But you will have to lay in your paddle when we get near the other end, for the sides narrow in there, and the redskins would hear a fish jump, half a mile away.”

During the day the men passed their time in sleep, in mending their clothes, or in talking quietly together.  The use of tea had not yet become general in America, and the meals were washed down with water drawn from the lake (where an over-hanging bush shaded the shore from the sight of anyone on the opposite bank), mixed with rum from the gourds which all the scouts carried.

Nat spent some time in pointing out, to James, the signs by which the hunters found their way through the forest; by the moss and lichens growing more thickly on the side of the trunks of the trees opposed to the course of the prevailing winds, or by a slight inclination of the upper boughs of the trees in the same direction.

“An old woodsman can tell,” he said, “on the darkest night, on running his hand round the trunk of a tree, by the feel of the bark, which is north and south; but it would be long before you can get to such niceties as that; but, if you keep your eyes open as you go along, and look at the signs on the trunks, which are just as plain, when you once know them, as the marks on a man’s face, you will be able to make your way through the woods in the daytime.  Of course, when the sun is shining, you get its help, for, although it is not often a gleam comes down through the leaves, sometimes you come upon a little patch, and you are sure, now and then, to strike on a gap where a tree has fallen, and that gives you a line again.  A great help to a young beginner is the sun, for a young hand in the woods gets confused, and doubts the signs of the trees; but, in course, when he comes on a patch of sunlight, he can’t make a mistake nohow as to the direction.”

James indulged in a silent hope that, if he were ever lost in the woods, the sun would be shining, for, look as earnestly as he would, he could not perceive the signs which appeared so plain and distinct to the scout.  Occasionally, indeed, he fancied that there was some slight difference between one side of the trunk and the other; but he was by no means sure that, even in these cases, he should have noticed it unless it had been pointed out to him; while, in the greater part of the trees he could discern no difference whatever.