Again all seemed to be happening as he wished.

Presently he left the hill and, face toward the south, began to walk swiftly and silently down the rows of trees.

There was but little undergrowth, nothing to check his speed, and he strode on and on.

After a while he came to a brook running through low soft soil and then he did a strange thing, the very act that a white man travelling through the dangerous forest would have avoided.

He planted one foot in the yielding soil near the water's edge, and then stepping across, planted the other in exactly the same way on the far side.
When another yard brought him to hard ground he stopped and looked back with satisfaction.