Often would they pause and call out loudly the name of their boy; the bare possibility that he might be near and hear them seemed too precious to be slighted. Saving this, and, from time to time, an inquiry of affectionate solicitude on the part of the husband, with the wife's answer of patient reassurance that she was not weary, the two poor hearts pursued their way in silence. In the course of every four or five miles they would come to a solitary cabin home like their own, where they would stop and rouse the sleeping inmates, to inquire if aught had been seen there of their boy. Twice or thrice they heard, a far way off in the darkness, sounds that came to their troubled ears like the cries of a child in distress or terror. But when they had paused to listen, and had sent the name of their loved one ringing far and wide, naught had heard they, but the screaming of a night bird wheeling high aloft, or, peradventure, the distant howling of a wolf abroad on his nightly foray. At such times, with a look of dumb, distressed perplexity, first up into their faces, then all around him, old Pow-wow would give a plaintive whine, as if fully conscious that all was not going well with his human friends, and that this unwonted journey had a sad reference, in some way, to his little master. Sometimes dropping down upon his haunches in the path, some distance in advance, and turning his muzzle pitifully up to the moon, the affectionate old fellow would howl outright, long and loud, nor leaving off until his master and mistress were well up with him again. Thus, in his poor, dumb way, would Pow-wow testify that he was their fellow-sufferer, grieving and sympathizing with them and longing so earnestly to do something to help and comfort them--only but show poor dog how he might set about it. CHAPTER XVIII. Pow-Wow Finds Him. The gray dawn was beginning to take the sun-red glow of morning, when, quite worn out with so long a walk, the anxious parents arrived at the stockade station--the center and rallying point of the settlements in that quarter of Kentucky. They had been indulging themselves in the forlorn hope that their boy, by some strange chance, might possibly have found his way to that place; but this vanished with the first look of wondering-inquiry that greeted their coming. Though no tongue could give them any tidings of the lost one, kind and sympathetic hearts were there for comfort, with willing hands and swift feet for help. Among the latter were several hunters, cunning in woodcraft, who could follow a trail, whether of man or beast, the livelong day; and over ground where nothing might be distinguished by the inexperienced eye but grass or leaves, sand, pebbles or solid rock.