“Can you read it?” asked Menard, holding the torch high.
The priest nodded. Both of these men knew the Indian writing nearly as well as their own French.
“He does not know of the two men you got at Montreal, M’sieu. He tells of only six in our canoe.”
“No? But that matters little. The Beaver has hurried after him with nearly a score. They can give us trouble enough. What do you make of the huts? Do they mean three days or four?”
“It looks to me,” said the priest slowly, “that he was interrupted in drawing the fourth.”
“Well,”––Menard threw his torch into the brook, and turned away into the dusk of the thicket,––“we know enough. The fight will be somewhere near the head of the rapids. Perhaps they will wait until we get on into the islands.”
“And meantime,” said the priest, as they crackled through the undergrowth, “we shall 110 say nothing of this to Lieutenant Danton or the maid?”
“Nothing,” Menard replied.
In three days more they had passed Rapide Flat, after toiling laboriously by the Long Sault. They were a sober enough party now, oppressed with Danton’s dogged attention to duty and with the maid’s listless manner.
They were passing a small island the next morning, when Perrot gave a shout and stopped paddling.