He smiled gravely.
"Your search is ended, brother," he added.
"What do you mean?"
"The soul you sought has been found. It is no longer sick."
"Mayhap," I agreed, "but none the less 'tis out of reach and in great danger."
"We shall save it," he encouraged me. "Ta-wan-ne-ars knows. We must wait. The time will come."
He refused again to sleep, and we ate the remainder of the turkey—our hunger was prodigious—and pushed on, traveling most of the night. Not once did we see a trace of the Keepers, and when we halted Ta-wan-ne-ars said that we were on the marches of the hunting-grounds of the Mohawks. We slept together the remainder of that night, without a fire and on the top of a steep rock which was set with boulders which the foot of any climber must set in motion.
In the late morning we killed a rabbit, broiled and ate it and tramped the virgin forest until long past sunset. That day we ventured to discharge our firearms, and to my vast pride I killed a small deer. The following afternoon we caught our first view of the inland sea from a height of land, and the next morning we sighted the stockade of Oswego, the fort which Governor Burnet had established on the shores of the lake in his effort to divert the far-western fur-trade from the French posts.
The gate was closed, but as we approached it opened, and an enormous, pot-bellied figure in buckskin and fur cap sauntered out to meet us.
"Ja, idt is you," Corlaer hailed us. "I knew that Joncaire was oop to another of his tricks."