the forest, the valley: and--in the
valley--home! He turned to look behind him, down the lake. As he did so,
his heart bounded. Far away in the hazy distance, he saw the shadowy
outline of a canoe.

They were coming then! The warning had spoken truly. He had not been
deceived. Without an instant's delay, he darted from the sand-spit and
plunged into the woods.

Owing to the extent and thickness of the willow swamps, it was some time
before he reached the head of the lake. Beyond that, as he knew, the
forest was more open, and he would be able to travel much more rapidly.
But what would be good for him, would also help his pursuers. All he
could hope was that he would be able to get a long enough start of them
to keep well ahead--till he could find a sufficiently safe hiding-place.
He found an old deer-path, and followed it for a long distance, though
it trended rather too much to the south. Behind him he heard the harsh
calling of a couple of jays, and now and then he came across a chipmunk
which chattered indignantly at his presence. Otherwise he neither saw
nor heard anything to cause him alarm. As the time went on, he began to
hope that he had out-distanced his pursuers. And yet he could not rid
himself of the feeling that he was being followed.

In front of him the forest climbed the slope of a small hill. Here and
there the trees gave way to rocky spaces where enormous rocks towered
between them. At a glance, Dusty Star could see that it would be a good
place to hide in. He stood for a moment or two and looked carefully
along the back trail. He saw only the endless tree-trunks, grey-green in
the shadows. Nothing stirred.... Ah, what was that? His eyes fastened on
the spot where for the fraction of a second something seemed to have
flickered. He could not say that he had _seen_ an Indian flit from one
tree-trunk to another. Yet the sense that something was there made him
almost sure. If he had obeyed his first instinct to continue his flight
he would, most probably, have fallen at once into his enemies' hands.
Instead, he climbed quickly up among the rocks.

There was no time to lose in searching for the best hiding-place; yet he
stumbled by chance upon one which might have been made for the very
purpose. It was a narrow opening that led into a passage running into
the very centre of a pile of flat-topped rocks which enclosed it on all
sides, and which was so curiously formed that they looked exactly as if
deli