Beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. Plunged in its furtive depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; the mystery of the hoary wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of the centuries. In brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles, became a misty green translucence, the silence, the vastness, the solitude laid each a finger on you, bidding you go softly all the way. But in the twilight hour the real held still more aloof, and all the shadows bristled with dim fantastic shapes to awe and affright the alien-born. I was not alien-born. From earliest childhood I had known and loved these forest solitudes. Yet now, as when I was a little lad, the twilight shadows awed me. Here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunk so like a crouching panther that I sprang aside and had the steel half out before the clearer vision came. There it was the figure of a man gliding stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace with me as if with sinister intent. I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though inwardly I scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. What threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had to fear were bred in British kennels, and there was never any lack of clamor when they were beating up a cover. Yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting furtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily in the tail of my eye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I picked a time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, sent home a thrust which should have pinned the phantom to a tree. "Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?" The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow was become incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to the belt, standing so near he could have pricked me with his scalping knife. It was God's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for the friendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares. "Uncanoola?" said I. He nodded. "Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?" I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head. "No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him _that_ way," pointing back along the path. "How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exile had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the stately Indian hyperbole. "Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have long eyes--see heap things." "Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?" "Uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "See Captain Jennif' so"--he threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawling snake-like through the underwood. "Bime-by, come to river and find canoe--jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh and shake fist this way, and say 'God-damn.'"