Robert, in the thicket, smiled, because he too shared in so much gladness.
A faint sound out of the far west came to him.

It was so slight that it was hard to tell it from the whisper of the wind.

It barely registered on the drum of the ear, but when he listened again and with all his powers he was sure that it was a new and foreign note.

Then he separated it from the breeze among the leaves, and it seemed to him to contain a quality like that of the human voice.

If so, it might be hostile, because his friends, Willet, the hunter, and Tayoga, the Onondaga, were many miles away.