g white niched into the corner opposite. As he
advanced towards it, it started away, and would have brushed past him,
but he seized it. "Madam!" he whispered. "Do not scream. It is I,
Godfrey Landless."

In the darkness he felt the rigor of terror leave the form which he
held. It swayed against him, and the head fell back across his arm. He
raised the fainting figure, and stepping across the body of the mulatto
issued from the shed, to find Monakatocka standing beside the entrance,
knife in hand, and watchfully regardful of the sleeping Ricahecrians.

CHAPTER XXX

THE BACKWARD TRACK

Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indian
shook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn,
brawled along at their very feet, stepped noiselessly down into the
water, first, however, possessing himself of Luiz Sebastian's gun, which
lay upon the ground beside the hut. Landless, following him in silence,
would have turned his face towards the river, but again the
Susquehannock shook his head and began to make his way slowly and warily
up stream.

The other knew how to obey. Holding with one arm the unconscious form of
the woman he had come so many leagues to seek, and with the other
steadying himself by boulder and projecting cliff, he followed his
companion past the sleeping Ricahecrians, out of the shadow of the great
arch, into the splendor of the moonlight beyond. It was not until they
had gone a long distance, past vast, scarred cliffs, through close,
dark, scented tunnels formed by the overarching boughs of great
arbor-vitaes, up smooth slides where the water came down upon them in
long, unbroken, glassy green slopes, that Landless said, in a low voice:

"Why do we go up this stream instead of back to the river? It is their
road we are traveling."

The faint, reluctant smile of the Indian crossed the Susquehannock's
face. "The white man is very wise except when he is in the woods. Then
he is as if every brook ran fire-water and he had drunk of them all. A
pappoose could trick him. When these Algonquin dogs wake and find the
fawn fled and the yellow slave killed, they will cast about for our
trail, and they will find that we came up from the river. Then, when
they find no backward track, but only that we entered the water there,
before the maiden's hut, they will think that we have gone down the
stream, back to the river. They will go down to the river themselves,
but wh