Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/156

142 his course and make along the hill well below the cave. The forest was less park-like here, and saplings, whether of oak or maple he  was not able to say, made travel more difficult. Low branches must be felt for and carefully bent aside and as carefully released,  while the earth beneath held more litter of  fallen twigs. Absolute silence was well-nigh impossible now, and he must trust to the distance between him and his foe. It was warm in the forest, warm and humid, and the boy’s  body was soon bathed in perspiration and his  hands sweated so that his grasp on the impeding branches sometimes slipped and they  whipped his face cruelly and seemed determined to reveal his presence. But after a while he breathed more freely and stopped  to rest.

He was very weary now and would have asked nothing better than to have lain himself down and slept. But in spite of all his painful travel, he was still but a short distance from the cave, and had he failed to  awaken before dawn would of a certainty  been soon found. He reckoned on at least four hours yet before the light and in those  four hours meant to put as many miles between him and his Indian guards. That they