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XVI 214

We got our bearings, a pair of boots for D'ri, and a hearty meal in the cabin of a settler. The good man was unfamiliar with the upper shore, and we got no help in our mystery. Starting west, in the woods, on our way to the Harbor, we stopped here and there to listen, but heard only wood-thrush and partridge—the fife and drum of nature. That other music had gone out of hearing. We had no compass, but D'ri knew the forest as a crow knows the air. He knew the language of the trees and the brooks. The feel of the bark and what he called "the lean of the timber" told him which way was south. River and stream had a way of telling him whence they had come and where they were going, but he had no understanding of a map. I remember, after we had come to