friends to the law and to the king,"
returned he who rode foremost. "Men who have journeyed since the rising
sun, in the shades of this forest, without nourishment, and are sadly
tired of their wayfaring."

"You are, then, lost," interrupted the hunter, "and have found how
helpless 'tis not to know whether to take the right hand or the left?"

"Even so; sucking babes are not more dependent on those who guide them
than we who are of larger growth, and who may now be said to possess the
stature without the knowledge of men. Know you the distance to a post of
the crown called William Henry?"

"Hoot!" shouted the scout, who did not spare his open laughter, though,
instantly checking the dangerous sounds, he indulged his merriment at
less risk of being overheard by any lurking enemies. "You are as much
off the scent as a hound would be, with Horican atwixt him and the deer!
William Henry, man! if you are friends to the king, and have business
with the army, your better way would be to follow the river down to
Edward, and lay the matter before Webb; who tarries there, instead of
pushing into the defiles, and driving this saucy Frenchman back across
Champlain, into his den again."

Before the stranger could make any reply to this unexpected proposition,
another horseman dashed the bushes aside, and leaped his charger into
the pathway, in front of his companion.

"What, then, may be our distance from Fort Edward?" demanded a new
speaker; "the place you advise us to seek we left this morning, and our
destination is the head of the lake."

"Then you must have lost your eyesight afore losing your way, for the
road across the portage is cut to a good two rods, and is as grand a
path, I calculate, as any that runs into London, or even before the
palace of the king himself."

"We will not dispute concerning the excellence of the passage," returned
Heyward, smiling; for, as the reader has anticipated, it was he. "It is
enough, for the present, that we trusted to an Indian guide to take us
by a nearer, though blinder path, and that we are deceived in his
knowledge. In plain words, we know not where we are."

"An Indian lost in the woods!" said the scout, shaking his head
doubtingly; "when the sun is scorching the tree-tops, and the
water-courses are full; when the moss on every beech he sees, will tell
him in which quarter the north star will shine at night! The woods are
full of deer paths which run to the streams and licks,