made each movement. She knew if she slipped that she
would push him as well as herself off into the lake.

"I mustn't slip! I mustn't," she said over and over to herself.

Nathan did not speak, except to tell her where to step. At last they
were safely down, standing on a narrow rocky ledge which hardly gave
them a foothold. Along this they crept to a thick growth of alder
bushes where a clumsy wooden punt was fastened.

Faith followed Nathan into the punt, and as he pushed the boat off
from the bushes she gave a long sigh of relief.

"That was great!" declared Nathan triumphantly. "Say, you're the
bravest girl I know. I've always wondered if I could bring anybody
down that cliff, and now I know I can. But you mustn't tell any one
how we got out of the fort. You won't, will you?" And Faith renewed
her promise not to tell.

Nathan paddled the boat out around the promontory on which the fort
was built. He kept close to the shore.

"Does Major Young stay at the fort?" questioned Faith.

"Not very long at a time. He comes and goes, like all spies," replied
Nathan scornfully. "I wish the Green Mountain Boys would take this
fort and send the English back where they belong. They keep stirring
the Indians up against the settlers, so that people don't know when
they are safe."

It was the last day of October, and the morning had been bright and
sunny. The sun still shone, but an east wind was ruffling the waters
of the lake, and Faith began to feel chilly.

"I'll warrant you don't know when this lake was discovered?" said
Nathan; and Faith was delighted to tell him that Samuel De Champlain
discovered and gave the lake his name in 1609.

"The Indians used to call it 'Pe-ton-boque,'" she added.

But when Nathan asked when the fort was built she could not answer,
and the boy told her of the brave Frenchmen who built Ticonderoga in
1756, bringing troops and supplies from Canada.

"The old fort has all sorts of provisions, and guns and powder that
the English have stored there. I wish the American troops had them. If
I were Ethan Allen or Seth Warner I'd make a try, anyway, for this
fort and for Crown Point, too," said Nathan.

The rising wind made it rather difficult for the boy to manage his
boat, and he finally landed some distance above the point where
Kashaqua had reached shore. Faith was sure that she could go over the
fields and find her way safely home, and Nathan was anxious to cross
the lake to Shoreham befo