They travelled in irregular zig-zags, choosing the drier ground, and having a good deal of difficulty owing to streams swollen with melting snow to angry little rivers. But Dick only saw the choke-cherry's white tassels trailing in the water, the white drifts clearing from the hollows and showing all the tender tangled green beneath, the delicate green mist that showed upon the birch-boughs, and the young leaves that reddened the twigs of oak and maple. He only heard the robins whistling from dawn to dusk, the rush and patter of the sudden sparkling showers, the rustlings and murmurs that showed the woods were full of life about them. He ate what was offered him and slept where Peter wished, dazed and enraptured. For two golden weeks the dream endured. And then quite suddenly Peter Many-Names buckled down to the trail. The dream was roughly broken. Thereafter Dick had no leisure for the beauties of the wilderness. After the day's march, he had only strength enough left to roll himself in his blankets and groan. He lived from dawn till dark in a stupor, not of delight, but of weariness. His softer muscles were racked and tortured with manifold aches, strained and swollen with the effort of the pace. And when he moaned and lamented, Peter scowled at him horribly, and called him rude discourteous names in the Indian tongue. "Where are we going?" Dick would groan impatiently, at the end of a trying day. "What's the need of all this hurry?" And Peter's contemptuous little dark face would flame with that excitement which Dick had seen in it that night in the sugar-camp, and his voice would rise again to that wild mesmeric chant. "We are going north, north, north!" he would sometimes answer; "north to the land of clean winds and strong men, to the land of uncounted bison and wild fowl in plenty for the hunter! North to the land loved of its children, to my country! But what do you know of it? Is it not enough for you if I lead you there in ease and safety?" "Ease!" poor wearied Dick would reply, "do you call this ease?" and then would roll himself in his blanket and fall into the sleep of exhaustion. Day after day this incident was repeated. For Peter Many-Names was merciless, and his tongue played round Dick's very excusable weaknesses with the stinging unexpectedness of a whip-lash. But after a while Dick's muscles hardened. The day's march was no longer torment to him. He grew almost as lean and wiry as his comrade, though he would never attain to the Indian's powers of endurance of fatigue. And then the daring young pair proceeded amicably enough.