midday
Her own hand touched his as she spoke , and he put it to his lips in silence . Kneeling upon the turf by the stream , he raised the water in his hands and she stooped and drank from them , and then they went back to the fire and sat beside it without speaking until the arrival of Monakatocka , laden with a wild turkey . An hour later the Susquehannock carefully extinguished the fire , raked all the embers and ashes into the stream , hid beneath great rocks the debris of their morning meal , obliterated all moccasin prints , and having made the little hollow between the hills to all appearance precisely as it was a few hours before , when the foot of man had probably never entered it , stepped into the stream and announced that they were ready to pursue their journey . Before midday , the stream winding to the south , they left it , and plunging into the dark heart of the forest pushed rapidly on with their faces to the east . Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of the hollow in the hills . They had traveled swiftly , sleeping but a few hours of each night and in the daytime pausing for rest only when Landless , quietly watchful , saw the weariness growing in the eyes of the woman beside him , or noted her lagging footsteps . They had left the higher mountains behind them , but still moved through what seemed an uninhabited territory .