In the memorandum-book there is an entry without date in a script of unusual size. Those large letters were made slowly and with a trembling hand. It was probably written while he sat there in the lonely, autumn woods before giving up to his weakness. This is the entry: _"Theys days when I dont blieve God is over per-ticklar with a man bout swearin."_ XXXIII SOON after breakfast that morning Master had hitched the ox to the boat-jumper. "My land! Where ye goin'?" Sinth inquired. "To-morrow we're going out to Benson Falls with you and the children," said Master. "I thought we'd better take the ox and what things you need to-day as far as Link Harris's. That's about four miles down the Leonard trail. The ox will have all he can do to-morrow if he starts from Harris's." The young man said nothing of another purpose which he had in mind--that of learning, as soon as possible, the nearest way out of the Rainbow country. "What does that mean?" Sinth asked. "Only this--we may have trouble with these pirates, and we want to get you out of the way. We'll have to travel, and we can't leave you in the camp alone. You and the children can ride over, and we'll come back afoot." So Sinth packed her satchels and a big camp-bag, and all made the journey to Harris's where they left the ox and the jumper. It was near six o'clock when they returned to the little camp at Rainbow. Strong was not there, and after supper, while the dusk fell, they sat on a blanket by the fire, and Sinth raked the old scrap-heap of family history to which a score of ancestors had contributed, each in his time. It was all a kind of folk-lore--mouldy, rusty, distorted, dreamlike. It told of bears in the pig-pen, of moose in the door-yard, of panthers glaring through the windows at night, of Indians surrounding the cabin, and of the torture by fire and steel. At bedtime Silas had not arrived. Sinth, however, showed no sign of worry. He knew the woods so well, and there were bear and fish and sundry temptations, each greater than his bed. "Mebbe he's took after a bear," Sinth suggested, while she began to undress the children. "You remember we heard him shoot soon after he left here," said Master. "It may be he wounded a bear and followed him." "Like as not," she answered. In a moment she put her hand on Master's arm and whispered to him. "Say!" said she, "I don't want to make trouble, but if I was you I wouldn't wait no longer for that old fool." She stalled the needles into her ball of yarn and rolled up her knitting. She continued, with a sigh of impatience: "I'd go over to Buckhom an' git that girl, if I had to bring 'er on my back." "That's about what I propose to do," said the young man, with a laugh. "I'm sick o' this dilly-dally in'," said Sinth, "an' I guess she is, too."