The four after their imprisonment and privations
were recovering their weight and color. Paul, who had suffered
the most, had, on the other hand, made the quickest recovery, and
their present situation, so fortunate in contrast with their
threatened fate a few days before, made a great appeal to his
imagination. The door was allowed to stand open six inches , and
through the crevice he watched the rain pattering on the dark
earth. He felt an immense sense of security and comfort. Paul
was hopeful by nature and full of courage, but when he lay bound
and alone in a hut in the Iroquois camp it seemed to him that no
chance was left. The comrades had been kept separate, and he had
supposed the others to be dead. But here he was snatched from
the very pit of death, and all the others had been saved from a
like fate.
"If I'd known that you were alive and uncaptured, Henry," he
said, " I'd never have given up hope. It was a wonderful thing
you did to start the chain that drew us all away."
"It's no more than Sol or Tom or any of you would have done,"
said Henry.
"We might have tried it," said Long Jim Hart, "but I ain't sure
that we'd have done it. Likely ez not, ef it had been left to me
my scalp would be dryin' somewhat in the breeze that fans a
Mohawk village.
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