"Do you think so?" asked Henry. "Do you think that this wilderness, which extends a thousand miles in every direction, is under your rule?" The young subaltern looked around at the dark forest and shivered a little. "Technically, yes," he replied, "but it's a long way from Eton." "What's Eton?" "Eton is a school in England, a school for the sons of gentlemen." "I see. And would I be considered the son of a gentleman?" Young Cawthorne looked up at the tanned and powerful face bent over him. He had already noted Henry's good English, and, feeling the compelling gaze of one who was born to be a master, he replied, sincerely and cheerfully: "Yes, the son of a gentleman, and a gentleman yourself." "An' I'm a gentleman too," said Shif'less Sol. "My good rifle says so every time." "It was the power of earlier weapons that started the line of gentlemen," said Cawthorne. "Now what do you two gentlemen propose to do with me?" "Do you know what would be done with us if things were changed about?" asked Henry, "and we were the prisoners of you and the colonel and the red men with whom you travel?" "No. What would it be?" "You'd have the pleasure of standing by and seeing the two of us burned alive at the stake. We wouldn't be burned quickly. It can be protracted for hours, and it's often done to our people by your allies." The young Englishman paled. "Surely it can't be so!" he said. "But surely it is so!" said the young forester fiercely. "I'm at your mercy." "We ain't goin' to burn you now," said Shif'less Sol. "We can't afford to set up a big torch in the forest, with our enemies so near." Cawthorne shivered. "Do you still feel," asked Henry, "that you're the ruler over the wilderness here, five thousand miles from London?" "Technically only. At the present time I'm making no boasts." "Now, you go back to your colonel and the renegades and the red chiefs and tell them they'll find no thoroughfare to the white settlements." "So, you don't mean to kill me?" "No, we don't do that sort of thing. Since we can't hold you a prisoner now, we release you. It's likely that you don't know your way to your own camp, but your red comrade here will guide you. My friend didn't break his skull, when he struck him with the butt of his rifle, though it was a shrewd blow. He's coming to." Cawthorne looked down at the reviving savage, and then looked up to thank the foresters, but they were gone. They had vanished so quickly and silently that he had not heard them going. Had it not been for the savage who was now sitting up he would not have believed that it was real. Henry and the shiftless one had dropped down in the bushes only a little distance away, and, by the moonlight, they saw the look of bewilderment on the face of the young Englishman. "It don't hardly look fair to our people that we should let him go," said the shiftless one.