e soon at work, melting the lead and casting
bullets for their rifles, then pouring the shining pellets in a stream
into their pouches. They continued at the task from day to day until
all the lead was turned into bullets and then they began work on
another pair of snowshoes, these intended for Robert.

Despite the safety and comfort of their home in the rock, both began
to chafe now, and time grew tremendously long. They had done nearly
everything they could do for themselves, and life had become so easy
that there was leisure to think and be restless, because they were far
away from great affairs.

"When my snowshoes are finished and I perfect myself in the use of
them," said Robert, "I favor an attempt to escape on the ice and snow
to the south. We grow rusty, you and I, here, Tayoga. The war may be
decided in our absence and I want to see Dave, too. I want to hear him
tell how he got through the savage cordon to the lake."

"Have no fear about the war, Dagaeoga," said the Onondaga. "It will
not be ended this winter nor the next. Before there is peace between
the French king and the British king you will have a chance to make
many speeches. Yet, like you, I think we should go. It is not well for
us to lie hidden in the ground through a whole winter."

"But when we leave our good home here I shall leave many regrets
behind."

He looked around at the cave and its supplies of skins and furs, its
stores of wood and food. Fortune had helped their own skill and they
had made a marvelous change in the place. Its bleakness and bareness
had disappeared. In the cold and bitter wilderness it offered more
than comfort, it was luxury itself.

"So shall I," said Tayoga, appreciatively, "but we will heap rocks up
to the very top of the door, so that only a little air and nothing
else can enter, and leave it as it is. Some day we may want to use it
again."

Having decided to go, they became very impatient, but they did not
skimp the work on the snowshoes, knowing how much depended on their
strength, but that task too, like all the others, came to an end in
time. Robert practiced a while and they selected a day of departure.
They were to take with them all the powder and bullets, a large supply
of food and their heavy bearskin overcoats. They had also made for
themselves over-moccasins of fur and extra deerskin leggings. They
would be bundled up greatly, but it was absolutely necessary in order
to face the great cold, that h