. But not to know that
they are before us! To know that they may be to the north of us, may be
to the south of us! that we may even have passed them! it is maddening!"

"We have not passed them," said his companion slowly, "for--" he stopped
abruptly, broke off a bough from a sumach bush beside him, and falling
on his knees, leaned far out over the stream. There were many tiny
cascades in the brook with little eddies below them where sticks and
leaves circled gaily around before they were drawn on to the next
miniature fall, and into one of these eddies the Indian plunged the
bough. The next moment he drew it carefully towards him, something white
clinging to one of its twigs. It proved to be a fragment of lace--not
more than an inch or two--and it might have been torn from a woman's
kerchief. Landless's hand closed over it convulsively.

"It came down the stream!" he cried.

The other nodded. "Monakatocka saw it slip over that fall. It has not
been in the water long."

"Then--my God!--they are close at hand! They are up this stream!"

The Indian nodded again with a look of satisfaction upon his bronze
features. Landless raised his eyes to the cloudless blue, and his lips
moved. Then, without a word he turned his face up the mountain stream,
and the Indian followed him.

For an hour they crept warily onward, following the stream in its
capricious wanderings. A broken trailer of grapevine, a pine cone that
had been crushed under foot, the print of a moccasin on a bit of muddy
ground told them that they had indeed recovered the long lost trail.
They moved silently, sometimes creeping on hands and knees through the
long grass where the bank was barren of bushes, sometimes gliding
swiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closed
in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another bend,
and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed
between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The
Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to
his companion to do likewise. "Monakatocka smells fire," he whispered.

A moment later they rounded an overhanging, fern-clad rock, and came
full upon that at which Landless stared with a sharp intake of his
breath, and which even his impassive guide greeted with a long-drawn
"Ugh!" of amazement.

Towards them brawled the impetuous stream through a wonderful gorge. The
precipitous hillsides, clothed wi