iosity
concerning it increased. He wanted to see what kind of city it was, and
he wanted to see what kind of a man the Marquis Duquesne, the
Governor-General of Canada, was. Well, he would be there before many
days and he would see for himself. He and his comrades already had been
triumphant over a danger so great that nothing could stop them now. He
felt all the elation and certainty that came from a victory over odds.

He rose, parted the bushes and made another tour of the region about
their covert. When he was at a point about a hundred yards away he
fancied that he heard a sound in a thicket a considerable distance
ahead. Promptly taking shelter behind a large tree, he used both eyes
and ears, watching the thicket closely, and listening for any other
sound that might come.

He heard nothing else but his keen eyes noted a bush swaying directly
into the teeth of the wind, a movement that could not occur unless
something alive in the thicket caused it. He slid his rifle forward and
still watched. Now the bush shook violently, and an awkward black
figure, shooting out, ran across the open. It was only a bear, and he
was about to resume his circling walk, but second thought told him that
the bear was running as if he ran away from an object of which he was
afraid, and there was nothing in the northern forests except human
beings to scare a bear.

He settled back in his shelter and resumed his watch in the thicket,
leaving the bear to run where he pleased, which he did, disappearing
with a snort in another thicket. A full ten minutes passed. Robert had
not stirred. He was crouched behind the tree, blending with the grass,
and he held his rifle ready to be fired in an instant, should the need
arise.

The bush that had moved against the wind had ceased stirring long since,
but now he saw another shaking and it, too, paid no attention to the
laws of nature, defying the wind as the first had done. Robert
concentrated his gaze upon it, thankful that he had not made the black
bear the original cause of things, and presently he saw the feathered
head of an Indian appear among the leaves. It was only a glimpse, he did
not see the body or even the face of the warrior, but it was enough.
Where one warrior was another was likely to be in those northern
marches, the most dangerous kind of neutral ground.

He began to slide away, keeping the big tree trunk between him and the
thicket, using all the arts of the forest trailer th