Henry sat upon a piece of fallen brushwood near the edge of the morass, and looked at the fugitives, and his heart sank within him. They were hardly in the likeness of his own kind, and they seemed practically lifeless now. Everything was dull, heavy, and dead. The note of the wind among the leaves was somber. A long black snake slipped from the marshy grass near his feet and disappeared soundlessly in the water. He was sick, sick to death at the sight of so much suffering, and the desire for vengeance, slow, cold, and far more lasting than any hot outburst, grew within him. A slight noise, and Shif'less Sol stood beside him. “Did you hear?” asked the shiftless one, in a significant tone. “Hear what?” asked Henry, who had been deep in thought. “The wolf howl, just a very little cry, very far away an' under the horizon, but thar all the same. Listen, thar she goes ag'in!” Henry bent his ear and distinctly heard the faint, whining note, and then it came a third time. He looked tip at Shif'less Sol, and his face grew white--but not for himself. “Yes,” said Shif'less Sol. He understood the look. “We are pursued. Them wolves howlin' are the Iroquois. What do you reckon we're goin' to do, Henry?” “Fight!” replied the youth, with fierce energy. “Beat 'em off!” “How?” Henry circled the little oasis with the eye of a general, and his plan came. “You'll stand here, where the earth gives a footing,” he said, “you, Solomon Hyde, as brave a man as I ever saw, and with you will be Paul Cotter, Tom Ross, Jim Hart, and Henry Ware, old friends of yours. Carpenter will at once lead the women and children on ahead, and perhaps they will not hear the battle that is going to be fought here.” A smile of approval, slow, but deep and comprehensive, stole over the face of Solomon Hyde, surnamed, wholly without fitness, the shiftless one. “It seems to me,” he said, “that I've heard o' them four fellers you're talkin' about, an' ef I wuz to hunt all over this planet an' them other planets that Paul tells of, I couldn't find four other fellers that I'd ez soon have with me.” “We've got to stand here to the death,” said Henry. “You're shorely right,” said Shif'less Sol. The hands of the two comrades met in a grip of steel. The other three were called and were told of the plan, which met with their full approval. Then the news was carried to Carpenter, who quickly agreed that their course was the wisest. He urged all the fugitives to their feet, telling them that they must reach another dry place before night, but they were past asking questions now, and, heavy and apathetic, they passed on into the swamp.