ay from these stalwart figures, believing
them to be denizens from some other world; whilst the French
soldiers, who might have felt very differently, had not yet so far
equipped themselves as to be ready to come out from their lines.

Fritz had marked his line with care. Only upon one small section
between lake and forest was there any possible passage without
peril from the French lines, and that was by skirting the head of
the lake just where their own intrenched camp, now almost in ruins,
gave them shelter.

The woodsman's and the Ranger's instinct kept true within him even
in the confusion and darkness. He never deflected from his line.

"This way! this way!" he called to Roche in smothered tones, as
they heard the sound of the fight growing fainter behind them. He
took the lad's hand, and plunged into the marshy hollow. He knew
that none would follow them there; the ground was too treacherous.
But there was a path known to himself which he could find blindfold
by day or night.

He pulled his comrade along with a fierce, wild haste, till at a
certain point he paused. There was a little cavernous shelter in
the midst of the morass, and here the pair sank down breathless and
exhausted.

"We are saved!" gasped Roche, clasping his comrade by the hand.

"For the moment--yes," answered Fritz; "but what of afterwards?"

Chapter 2: Escape.

Young Roche lay face downwards upon the rocky floor of the little
cavern, great sobs breaking from him which he was unable to
restrain. Fritz, with a stern, set face, sat beside another
prostrate figure--that of a man who looked more dead than alive,
and whose head and arm were wrapped in linen bandages soaked
through and through with blood.

It was Captain Pringle, their friend and comrade in Fort William
Henry, who had elected to remain with the garrison when the other
two took part in a sortie and cut themselves a path to the forest.
Had he remained with them, he might have fared better; he would at
least have been spared the horrors of a scene which would now be
branded forever upon his memory in characters of fire.

What had happened to that ill-fated fort Fritz and Roche knew
little as yet. They had heard the tremendous firing which had
followed whilst they remained in hiding during the day the dawn of
which had seen the last desperate sortie. They had at night seen
flames which spoke of Indian campfires all round the place, and
from the complete cessation of f