was a question hard to answer.
The captain of the scouts sent two of his men out upon the trail by
which they expected Ethan Allen and the troops under him to advance.

Meanwhile Enoch Harding had not given up the search for the escaped spy.
He feared what the fellow might yet do to weaken or utterly ruin the
hopes of the American troops. Halpen was not armed, so the youth had no
fear of being attacked by him; but he spent his time creeping through
the brushwood up and down the lake shore, hoping to stumble upon the
Yorker. He did not believe that Halpen had gone far from the encampment.
Finally, in his wanderings, he came to the cove where the scout who had
spent the day inside the fort, had landed. The bateaus were on the other
side of the cove; the canoe the scout had used was alone in the shadow
of a big oak, although a sentinel watched the bateaus. This sentinel had
neglected to remove the canoe to his side of the cove and as Enoch came
down the hillside he observed something moving in the shadow of the oak.
A moment later, before he was really sure whether this something was a
man or an animal, the canoe left the bank. The trees threw their shadows
upon the water and it was almost impossible to observe the moving craft
clearly; yet he was pretty sure that there was a figure in it and that
it had been unmoored.

The youth was too far away to risk a shot; the sentinel was much farther
from the point of embarkation. If Simon Halpen had found and seized this
canoe it looked for a moment as though he would surely escape.

Enoch ran down to the edge of the water, but when he reached the point
at which the canoe had been moored it was almost out of sight. He could
not see the figure in the boat clearly enough to shoot. Indeed, he
shrank from committing what seemed like murder. Simon Halpen was
defenseless. "But he must not escape!" the boy exclaimed and started
around the shore of the cove. The fugitive kept the canoe within the
deep shadow of the trees which bordered the inlet. He did not paddle out
into the centre; there he might have been seen by the sentinel on the
other side.

The boy ran along the edge of the cove, stumbling over the tree roots
and fallen logs, yet endeavoring to follow the course of the canoe as
quietly as possible. There was a chance of his passing the fugitive and
reaching the mouth of the cove first. Then, he thought, Halpen would be
at his mercy. The better to do this unobserved he made a d