Mr.Silas Pennypacker who was a man of his own will announced that he was going, too.

He puffed out his ruddy cheeks and said emphatically: "I've heard from hunters of that place; it's one of the great curiosities of the country and for the sake of learning I'm bound to see it.

Think of all the gigantic skeletons of the mastodon, the mammoth and other monsters lying there on the ground for ages!" Henry and Paul were glad that Mr.Pennypacker was to be with them, as in the woods he was a delightful comrade, able always to make instruction entertaining, and the superiority of his mind appealed unconsciously to both of these boys who--each in his way--were also of superior cast.
They departed on a fine morning--the spring was early and held steady--and all Wareville saw them go.

It was a brilliant little cavalcade; the horses, their heads up to scent the breeze from the fragrant wilderness, and the men, as eager to start, everyone with a long slender-barreled Kentucky rifle on his shoulder, the fringed and brilliantly colored deerskin hunting shirt falling almost to his knees, and, below that deerskin leggings and deerskin moccasins adorned with many-tinted beads.

It was a vivid picture of the young West, so young, and yet so strong and so full of life, the little seed from which so mighty a tree was soon to grow.
All of them stopped again, as if by an involuntary impulse, at the edge of the forest, and waved their hands in another, and, this time, in a last good-by to the watchers at the fort.