"
Rolf knew how to travel now; he began softly. At a long, easy
stride he went for half an hour, then at a swinging trot for a
mile or two. Five miles an hour he could make, but there was one
great obstacle to speed at this season -- every stream was at
flood, all were difficult to cross. The brooks he could wade or
sometimes could fell a tree across them, but the rivers were too
wide to bridge, too cold and dangerous to swim. In nearly every
case he had to make a raft. A good scout takes no chances. A
slight raft means a risky passage; a good one, a safe crossing
but loss of time in preparations. Fifteen good rafts did Rolf
make in that cross-country journey of three days: dry spruce logs
he found each time and bound them together with leather-wood and
withes of willow. It meant a delay of at least an hour each time;
that is five hours each day. But the time was wisely spent. The
days were lengthening; he could travel much at dusk. Soon he was
among settlements. Rumours he got at a settler's cabin of Sir
George Prevost's attack on Sackett's Harbour and the gallant
repulse and at morning of the fourth day he came on the hill
above Sackett's Harbour -- the same hill where he had stood three
months before.
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