“How strangely I was rescued,” he muttered, as he walked along. “Heaven sent my unknown friend at the very moment; had he delayed his coming a moment longer, I should not have been here. Uncle Ruff is pretty shrewd, but he can not imagine who the man was, except he thinks in a general way that it was some hunter who has happened to stroll down this way; but there is something which he don’t understand in the way he takes himself off after firing his gun, without waiting for so much as a word of thanks from us. I am glad that Uncle Ruff has sent me off on this scout, for it seems as if I were going toward my friend, with a good chance of meeting.” The dense woods through which the boy had been making his way thus far, now assumed a different character--being much more open and broken, while the ground was rocky and hilly--the face of the country being such as is found in a place where the rivers and streams can only make their way by passing through deep gorges and kenyons. Pressing forward in this manner, Little Rifle at last found himself upon quite a lofty ridge, which gave him an extensive view in every direction. It was indeed the post of observation, whither he had directed his steps from the first. With characteristic caution, he screened himself from observation as much as possible by climbing to the top of one of the scrubby oaks, and then making a long and careful survey of the suspicious territory. Only a single hasty glance was cast back over the region from which he had just come, as that was under the guardianship of old Robsart, who needed no assistance from him, in a work of that kind. But he looked to the westward, where hundreds of miles of the vast solitude opened before him. It was a scene made up of rock, stream and wood in all their varied beauty, such as would have won the eye, in a loving dream, of any painter. Here and there he could trace the winding course of the streams, starting on their long journey to the far-away Mexican Gulf. In many cases these streams would be visible for the better part of a mile, and then would be hidden from view by the rocks and woods that interposed--only for a time, however, as they soon shot into sight again, white with bubbles and foam, into which they had been beaten on their furious, plunging way through the gorges. In two places these torrents disappeared into deep, narrow kenyons, above which hung a mist, that threw back a faint prismatic reflection in the bright morning sunlight. And so the vision extended, the streams diminishing to tiny silver threads, the woods and rocks melting into a dim, smoky haze, until far away toward the magnificent snow-crowned Cascade Range, which to the imaginative boy seemed the wall that shut him in from the world.