Nor did the shiftless one himself discern any alien note.
The sky, a solid curve of blue, bore nowhere a trace of smoke. It was
undarkened and unstained, the same lonely brightness that had dawned every
morning for untold thousands of years.
Shif'less Sol showed no disappointment. 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. On either side of the brook remained the firm deep
impression of a human foot, of a white foot, the toes being turned
outward. No wilderness rover could mistake it, and yet it was hundreds of
miles to the nearest settlement of Shif'less Sol's kind.
He took another look at the footsteps, smiled again and resumed his
journey.
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