He did not have the slightest fear of the
man, and at last, raising his head, he took a look.
All his surmises were justified. He saw a great hulking youth of heavy
and dull countenance, carrying a rifle awkwardly, his place obviously
around some town and not in the depths of a forest, looking for a wary
enemy, who knew more of the wilderness than he could ever learn in all
his life. Harry saw that he was perspiring freely and that he looked
more like the hunted than the hunter. His eyes expressed bewilderment.
He was obviously lonely and apprehensive, not because he was a coward,
but because the situation was so strange to him.
Besides his rifle he carried a large knapsack, so much distended that
Harry knew it to be full of food. It was this that decided him. A
soldier, like an army, must travel on his stomach, and he wanted that
knapsack. Moreover he meant to get it. He leveled his shotgun and
called in a low tone, but a tone so sharp that it could be heard
distinctly by the one to whom it was addressed:
"Throw up your hands at once!"
The man threw them up so abruptly that the rifle fell from his shoulder
into the bushes, and he turned around, staring face toward the point from
which the command had come.
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