In another week the snow began to melt fast, and he set forth on his great return journey. The canoe was well supplied with provisions and the lake was quiet. He paddled for the mouth of the river, and, when he passed within the stream, the whole country looked so wintry that he believed the Indians must have gone to their villages for warmth and shelter. Firm in his opinion he paddled boldly against the current and took his course southward, though he did not relax his caution, as the Indians often sent out parties of hunters, despite cold or storm. They were not a forehanded people, and the plenty of summer was no guard against the scarcity of winter. They must find game or die, and Henry had very little real fear of anything except these questing bands. But he paddled on all the day without interruption. The dense forest on either shore was white and silent, and, when night came, he drew the canoe into the bushes, making his camp on land. The temperature had taken a great fall in the afternoon, and with the dark intense cold had come. The mercury went far below zero and the bitter wind that blew bit through the painted coat and all his clothing clean into the bone. It was so intense that he resolved to risk everything and build a fire. He managed to set a heap of dead wood burning in the lee of a hill, and he fed the fire for a long time, at last letting it die down into a great mass of coals that threw out heat like a furnace. Over this he hovered and felt the cold which had clutched him like a paralysis leaving his body. Then he wrapped the two blankets around the painted coat and slept in fair comfort till morning, sure that the intense cold would prevent any movement of the Indians in the forest. But the dawn disclosed a river frozen over to the depth of four inches, and his canoe, which he had taken the precaution to put on land, would be useless, at least for several days, as the ice could not melt sooner. Most forest runners, in such a case, would have abandoned the canoe, and would have gone on through the forest as best they could, but Henry had learned illimitable patience from the Indians. If the cold put a paralysis on his movements it did as much for those of the warriors. So he looked to the preservation of the canoe, and boldly built his fire anew, eating abundantly of the deer and wild turkey and a little of the bread, which he husbanded with such care. At night he slept in the canoe and occasionally he scouted in the country around, although the traveling was very hard, as the deep snow was covered with a sheet of ice, and he was compelled to break his way. He saw no Indian trails and he concluded that the hunting parties even had taken to their tepees, and would wait until the thaw came.