wrence."

"There's nothing else for it," said Captain Ephraim ruefully. "It's not
my way to go by land if I can get by water, and I have not been a fathom
deep in a wood since King Philip came down on the province, so you must
lay the course and keep her straight, Amos."

"It is not far, and it will not take us long. Let us get over to the
southern bank and we shall make a start. If madame tires, De Catinat,
we shall take turns to carry her."

"Ah, monsieur, you cannot think what a good walker I am. In this
splendid air one might go on forever."

"We will cross then."

In a very few minutes they were at the other side and had landed at the
edge of the forest. There the guns and ammunition were allotted to each
man, and his share of the provisions and of the scanty baggage. Then
having paid the Indians, and having instructed them to say nothing of
their movements, they turned their backs upon the river and plunged into
the silent woods.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE HAIRLESS MAN.

All day they pushed on through the woodlands, walking in single file,
Amos Green first, then the seaman, then the lady, and De Catinat
bringing up the rear. The young woodsman advanced cautiously, seeing
and hearing much that was lost to his companions, stopping continually
and examining the signs of leaf and moss and twig. Their route lay for
the most part through open glades amid a huge pine forest, with a green
sward beneath their feet, made beautiful by the white euphorbia, the
golden rod, and the purple aster. Sometimes, however, the great trunks
closed in upon them, and they had to grope their way in a dim twilight,
or push a path through the tangled brushwood of green sassafras or
scarlet sumach. And then again the woods would shred suddenly away in
front of them, and they would skirt marshes, overgrown with wild rice
and dotted with little dark clumps of alder bushes, or make their way
past silent woodland lakes, all streaked and barred with the tree
shadows which threw their crimsons and clarets and bronzes upon the
fringe of the deep blue sheet of water. There were streams, too, some
clear and rippling where the trout flashed and the king-fisher gleamed,
others dark and poisonous from the tamarack swamps, where the wanderers
had to wade over their knees and carry Adele in their arms. So all day
they journeyed 'mid the great forests, with never a hint or token of
their fellow-man.

But if man were absent, there was