."

"I mean to do so. Do you see that silver flash through the tangle of
foliage? Don't you think it comes from the waters of Champlain?"

"It cannot be doubted. Once more we see the great lake, and Crown Point
itself is not so many miles away. It is in my mind that Black Rifle,
Great Bear, Mountain Wolf, Daganoweda and our men have been scouting
about it."

"And we might meet 'em coming back. I've had that thought too."

They walked on toward Champlain, through a forest apparently without
sign of danger, and Tayoga, hearing a slight noise in a thicket, turned
off to the right to see if a deer were browsing there. He found nothing,
but as the sound came again from a point farther on, he continued his
search, leaving his comrade out of sight behind him. The thickets were
very dense and suddenly the warning of Tododaho came.

He sprang back as quick as lightning, and doubtless he would have
escaped had it not been for his wounded shoulder. He hurled off the
first warrior who threw himself upon him, slipped from the grasp of a
second, but was unable to move when the mighty Tandakora and another
seized him by the shoulders.

But in the moment of dire peril he remembered his comrade and uttered a
long and thrilling cry of warning, which the huge hand of Tandakora
could not shut off in time. Then, knowing he was trapped and would only
injure his shoulder by further struggles, he ceased to resist,
submitting passively to the binding of his arms behind him.

He saw that Tandakora had seven or eight warriors with him, and a half
dozen more were bounding out on the trail after Robert. He heard a shot
and then another, but he did not hear any yell of triumph, and he drew a
long breath of relief. His warning cry had been uttered in time.
Dagaeoga would know that it was folly, for him also to fall into the
hands of Tandakora, and he would flee at his greatest speed.

So he stood erect with his wrists bound behind him, his face calm and
immovable. It did not become an Onondaga taken prisoner to show emotion,
or, in fact, feeling of any kind before his captors, but his heart was
full of anxiety as he waited with those who held him. A quarter of an
hour they stood thus, and then the pursuing warriors, recognizing the
vain nature of their quest, began to return. Tandakora did not upbraid
them, because he was in high good humor.

"Though the white youth, Lennox, has escaped," he said in Iroquois, "we
have done well. We have her