"Before many days, I trust," said Landless. "See, our faces are set to the east—-towards home."
She stood in silence for a moment, her face lifted, the color slowly coming back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, then said suddenly:—
"Did my father send you after me?"
"No, madam."
"Then how are you here?"
He looked at her with a smile. "I broke gaol—and came."
A shadow crossed her face, but it was gone in a moment. "I am very grateful," she said. "You have saved me from worse than death."
"It is I that am thankful," he answered.
They descended the hill in silence and found the Susquehannock, who had preceded them, squatted before a fire which he had kindled upon a flat rock beside one of the innumerable streamlets that wound here and there over the land.
"The dogs yonder will need Iroquois eyes to spy out this trail," he said with grim satisfaction, as they came up to him. "Let my brother and the Gold Hair rest by the fire, and Monakatocka will go into the forest and get them something to eat."