"Best
we've had since that time we spent a winter on the island in the
lake. This is littler, but it's harder to find. It'll be a fine
thing to know you're sleeping safe and sound with five hundred
Iroquois warriors only a few miles away."
"Then it'll suit me mighty well," said Shif'less Sol, grinning
broadly. "That's jest the place fur a lazy man like your humble
servant, which is me."
They reached the stepping stones, and Henry paused a moment.
"Do you feel steady enough, Sol, to jump from stone to stone?" he
asked.
"I'm feelin' so good I could fly ef I had to," he replied. "Jest
you jump on, Henry, an' fur every jump you take you'll find me
only one jump behind you!"
Henry, without further ado, sprang from one stone to another, and
behind him, stone for stone, came the shiftless one. It was now
past midnight, and the moon was obscured. The keenest eyes
twenty yards away could not have seen the two dusky figures as
they went by leaps into the very heart of the great, black swamp.
They reached the solid ground, and then the hut.
"Here, Sol," said Henry, "is my house, and yours, also, and soon,
I hope, to be that of Paul, Tom, and Jim, too.
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