habit, was to leave camp in his canoe, ostensibly setting out on an
ordinary trapping expedition. After nightfall, he would return to a
certain rock on the lake shore, and then Kerr was to steal out and
attempt to join him; thereafter, a night's paddling ought to take the
fugitive out of the immediate danger-zone.

The night was cloudy and black, and not too still; everything, in fact,
was in the boy's favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of
the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the
dense gloom of the forest. Then, almost as he had succeeded in gaining
the comparative safety of the trees, beneath his moccasined foot a stick
snapped, and a cursed Indian dog gave tongue, rousing the entire pack,
and the sleeping camp, like an angry swarm of bees, woke at once to
venomous life.

But Kerr by this time was at least clear of the wigwams; if he could but
reach that rock by the lake-side, and if the Frenchman had kept faith,
he might get safely away. Boileau would surely never fail him. Hampered
and constantly tripped up by roots and tangled undergrowth, confused by
the blackness of the night, the boy toiled on with thumping heart and
shortening breath; and at last, looming above him, was the welcome
outlines of the great rock. But on neither side of it could he find sign
of the trader or of his canoe. And already by the rustlings in the woods
and the occasional snapping of dry sticks, he could tell that the
pursuing Indians were drawing perilously near him.

"Boileau!" he whispered. "Boileau!" And then, in an agony of mind he
risked all, and shouted:

"Boileau, Boileau! _A moi!_"

An angry whisper from almost at his side replied viciously:

"_Pas de chahut, malheureux! A bord vite, mille dieux!_"

And as the canoe silently glided from the shore with the boy safely on
board, the form of an Indian could be dimly seen where Kerr had stood
the previous moment, and a bullet sang past his ear.

There for the time his more acute troubles ended. A few days later, at
Detroit, a throng of persons, half helpless with laughter, noisily
escorted to the Fort a forlorn, bald-headed, painted scare-crow, clad in
a tattered Indian blanket, which scare-crow presently introduced itself
to the commandant as Andrew Kerr, lately a prisoner of the Indians.

Once recovered from his fatigues and hardships, Andrew, as one of a
small force, was sent to Niagara to obtain supplies for the Detroit
g