d on with all haste. They had gone scarcely a
half-mile, when both made a startling discovery. Numerous
moccasin-tracks became suddenly visible, and O'Hara needed no prompting
to understand that the persistent Indians were again upon the trail of
the fugitives. How they had succeeded in regaining it, after being so
cleverly misled, was a mystery. The Huron accounted for it only upon
the supposition that they had come upon it by accident. A slight
comparison of the two trails by Oonamoo showed that the savages were
close behind their friends--so close that they could overtake them ere
they could reach their destination--the settlement.

CHAPTER XI.

AT BAY.

Like lightning from storm-clouds on high,
The hurtling, death-winged arrows fly,
And windrows of pale warriors lie!
Oh! never has the sun's bright eye
Looked from his hill-top in the sky,
Upon a field so glorious.--G. P. MORRIS.

As Oonamoo and O'Hara pressed forward, they found they were gaining
very rapidly upon the pursuers and pursued. As for the Huron, he had an
apprehension amounting almost to a certain conviction that the leader
of the Riflemen, after all, had committed a sad mistake, in believing
that he was safe from his enemies, after being rejoined by Edith. This
belief had led him into some trap, and the faithful Indian felt that
his services were sorely needed at that very moment.

It was yet early in the day, when he and the hunter ascended a sort of
ridge, which afforded them quite an extensive view of the surrounding
wilderness. Here, carefully protecting their persons from observation,
they looked out over the forest in quest of signs of human beings. The
unexperienced person might have looked for hours without discovering
the slightest evidence of animal life in the vast expanse spread out
before him. He would have seen the dark emerald of these western wilds
cut by the gleaming silver of many a stream and river; the tree-tops
gently bowed, like a field of grain, when the breeze rides over it; and
overhead, perhaps, would have been noted the flocks of birds circling
in curious figures; but all beneath would have been silent--silent,
save in that deep, solemn murmur which comes up perpetually like the
voice of the ocean.

But the Huron had scarcely glanced over the sylvan scene, when his dark
eye rested upon what, to him, was a most palpable evidence of the
presence of others in these woods. About a half-m