"Only to think," muttered Jamie between his teeth, "that an hour ago both Jack and Young Eagle were tied up here, expecting a cruel and lingering death from their captors. What were their thoughts? Oh, if they could only have known that help was so near! Hullo! Where is the trapper? He has disappeared!" and the lad was suddenly awakened from his reverie by becoming conscious that the hunter was nowhere to be seen.
After a few minutes' search he found the old man some little way in the forest, examining very keenly the trail of the Algonquins.
"Well, what do you make of it?" he asked.
The trapper still continued for another minute to examine the prints of the departing redskins, and then he said, speaking very slowly as though he had come to his conclusion only after much thought--
"They are making tracks for one of the streams that flows into Lake Seneca, where they have probably left their canoes hidden in the forest; then they will pass down the lake to the Seneca River, and from thence into Lake Ontario and thus to the Canadas."
"Then what chance shall we have of recovering the prisoners? Where can we overtake them?"
"Not till we reach the Seneca Falls, I fear," replied the trapper. "Some distance below the outlet of the lake there is a portage past the Falls where they must land to carry their canoes to the river below. That is the spot where we must surprise them. By that time the Eagle will be with us and some of his braves."
"That sounds all right, but what about the prisoners? I had hoped that something might have been done to rescue them before then," said Jamie.
"The lads are safe for another three days, at any rate, unless they attempt to escape, for it now seems more than likely that they are to be carried off to the Canadas."
"What is that picture that you are drawing, trapper?" for the old hunter had stripped a large piece of bark from a birch-tree, and on the inner side had begun to draw a few rough pictures. It contained a cryptic message in the Indian style of "picture-writing," by which these children of the forest spoke to each other at a distance.