ed the setting moon.

"And little time to do it in!" repeated the scout. "The thing may be
done in two fashions, by the help of Providence, without which it may
not be done at all."

"Name them quickly, for time presses."

"One would be to dismount the gentle ones, and let their beasts range
the plain; by sending the Mohicans in front, we might then cut a lane
through their sentries, and enter the fort over the dead bodies."

"It will not do--it will not do!" interrupted the generous Heyward; "a
soldier might force his way in this manner, but never with such a
convoy."

"'Twould be, indeed, a bloody path for tender feet to wade in," returned
the equally reluctant scout; "but I thought it befitting my manhood to
name it. We must then turn on our trail and get without the line of
their look-outs, when we will bend short to the west, and enter the
mountains; where I can hide you, so that all the devil's hounds in
Montcalm's pay would be thrown off the scent, for months to come."

"Let it be done, and that instantly."

Further words were unnecessary; for Hawkeye, merely uttering the mandate
to "follow," moved along the route by which they had just entered their
present critical and even dangerous situation. Their progress, like
their late dialogue, was guarded, and without noise; for none knew at
what moment a passing patrol, or a crouching picket of the enemy, might
rise upon their path. As they held their silent way along the margin of
the pond, again Heyward and the scout stole furtive glances at its
appalling dreariness. They looked in vain for the form they had so
recently seen stalking along its silent shores, while a low and regular
wash of the little waves, by announcing that the waters were not yet
subsided, furnished a frightful memorial of the deed of blood they had
just witnessed. Like all that passing and gloomy scene, the low basin,
however, quickly melted in the darkness, and became blended with the
mass of black objects in the rear of the travellers.

Hawkeye soon deviated from the line of their retreat, and striking off
towards the mountains which form the western boundary of the narrow
plain, he led his followers, with swift steps, deep within the shadows
that were cast from their high and broken summits. The route was now
painful; lying over ground ragged with rocks, and intersected with
ravines, and their progress proportionately slow. Bleak and black hills
lay on every side of them, compensatin