If Wenonah and Roderick had been pure white children, brought up in a civilised land with all the ignorance incident to such regions, they would have been found long ere this; but their part Indian blood and thorough training in that wild north land was now really to them a misfortune—first, because they had the strength and training to push on with such wonderful speed and endurance; again, it also made them wary and cunning, and so fearful of being tracked by wild beasts or hostile Indians that they carefully, but rapidly, moved along in a way that children not brought up in such a land would never have dreamed of.
So, while the Indians were looking for traces of the children, the wandering lost ones were doing all they could not to leave behind them the vestige of a trail. Thus hours passed on, the sun went down in beauty, the shadows of night began to fall; still not another sign of the wanderers had been found.
Discouraged and annoyed at failure, one after another of the searchers returned to the spot where the footsteps had been discovered. Here the camp had been made, and here had come Mrs Ross, with the boys and others.
The sight of the tiny footsteps of the hurrying feet of her little darlings nearly broke her heart. But she crushed down her great sorrow, that nothing in her should divert anyone, even her husband, in the search for those who were still exposed to so many dangers—lost in the great forest of so many thousands of square miles.
The last to come in was Mustagan, and his face was that of a man who has bad news but, by intense effort, shows it not in his countenance, but keeps it locked up in his heart. Few and yet searching were the words uttered at the camp fire as each one had declared to Mustagan that there had been no fresh signs. He himself had not given any answer, and, by asking questions of the others, had thus thrown off suspicion as regarded himself. But nevertheless he had seen signs, and what he had seen had nearly driven him wild. But darkness had come on him almost suddenly from the arising up of a black cloud in the west, and so, in spite of all his experience and anxiety, he had been compelled to return shortly after making this startling discovery. What he had seen had so alarmed him that he dare not tell, even to Mr Ross.
Very sad, indeed, was that second night around the camp fire. Mr and Mrs Ross were nearly broken-hearted. Frank, Alec, and Sam spent the night in sleepless sorrow. The Indians, who all dearly loved the lost little ones, sat back in the gloom and were still and quiet. A kind of stupor seemed to be over them all, with one exception, and, strange to say, that one was Mustagan. Sharp eyes were on him, and some wondered why he was so strangely agitated and was so restless and excited.
A little after midnight he abruptly sprang up, and speaking to Big Tom and a couple of other Indians they all withdrew some distance back into the darkness of the forest. To them in quiet tones, so as not to be heard by the sorrowing ones at the camp fire, Mustagan told what he had seen just as the darkness had set in. When they heard his story they were as much excited as was he.
His story was this: he had pushed on in the direction he had selected in the hunt for the children, and toward evening he had reached a part of the country where the berries were very plentiful. Here he had found traces that bears were numerous, and as they are fond of these berries they had been feasting on them. This, of course, alarmed him, and so he cautiously began making a circle around this place, and at length, in a depression in the forest, he found the dried-up channel of a creek. He cautiously hurried along on the dry sands, and, after going on only a few hundred yards, he found a number of fresh tracks, not only of bears that had recently crossed but also among them the footsteps of the lost children!
