“She’s White Eagle’s daughter; I’m adopted.”
“I see. Then you’re Indians?”
Judah nodded. Somehow he felt uneasy with these men. He did not trust them.
“Not by a long sight,” muttered Thomson. “Nothin’ but nigger blood ever planted the wool on top of that boy’s head.”
Suddenly, faint and clear came a blast on a horn, winding in and out the secret recesses of the woods. Again and yet again, then all was still.
The men were startled, but the children hastily gathered up their belongings and without a word to the strangers bounded away, and were soon lost in the dark shadows of the woods.
“Well, cap’t, this is a rum un. Now what do you reckon that means?”
“I have an idea that we’ve struck it rich, Thomson. Come, unless we want to stay here all night, suppose we push out for civilization?”
CHAPTER II.
One sultry evening in July, about a month later than the opening of our story, a young man was travelling through the woods on the outskirts of the city of Buffalo.