"And the great rain and flood, how did you meet that obstacle?" asked
Robert.

"That, too, was forethought. I have two canoes hidden in this region,
and it was easy to reach one of them, in which I traveled with speed
and comfort, until I could use it no longer. Then I hid it away again
that it might help me another time."

"And what did you do when the hurricane came, tearing up the bushes,
cutting down the trees, and making the forest as dangerous as if it
were being showered by cannon balls?"

"I crept under a wide ledge of stone in the side of a hill, where I
lay snug, dry and safe."

Wilton looked at Tayoga and Robert, and then back at the Onondaga.

"Is this wizardry?" he cried.

"No," replied Robert.

"Then it's singular chance."

"Nor that either. It was the necessities that confronted Tayoga in the
face of varied dangers, and my knowledge of what he would be likely to
do in either case. Merely a rather fortunate use of the reasoning
faculties, Will."

Willet, who had come in, smiled.

"Don't let 'em make game of you, Mr. Wilton," he said, "but there's
truth in what Robert tells you. He understands Tayoga so thoroughly
that he knows pretty well what he'll do in every crisis."

After the Onondaga had eaten he wrapped himself in blankets, went to
sleep in one of the rooms of the blockhouse and slept twenty-four
hours. When he awoke he showed no signs of his tremendous journey and
infinite dangers. He was once more the lithe and powerful Tayoga of
the Clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga of the great League of
the Hodenosaunee.

The besiegers meanwhile undertook no movement, but, as if in defiance,
they increased the fires in the red ring around the fort and they
showed themselves ostentatiously. Robert several times saw De
Courcelles with a thick bandage about his head, and he knew that the
Frenchman's mortification and rage at being tricked so by the Onondaga
must be intense.

Now the weather began to grow very cold again, and Robert saw the
number of tepees in the forest increase. The Indians, not content
with the fires, were providing themselves with good shelters, and to
every one it indicated a long siege. There was neither snow, nor hail,
but clear, bitter, intense cold, and again the timbers of the
blockhouse and outbuildings popped as they contracted under the lower
temperature.

The horses were pretty well sheltered from the cold, and Willet, with
his usual foresight, had sugge